HOME OFFICE

Charles Clarke: May I begin this afternoon by paying tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) during his most distinguished period of office, both as Secretary of State for Education and Employment and as Home Secretary? He has been an outstanding leader of this country and I pay tribute publicly to his tremendous work.
	With regard to the question, the Government are discussing with European Union colleagues the best and most durable solutions to processing applications for asylum effectively, and our focus remains clear: first, to continue to offer protection to genuine refugees while protecting our asylum system against abuse and, secondly, to strengthen protection in regions of origin to protect people and reduce secondary movement.

Gregory Barker: It was 2003 when the Prime Minister first raised this issue and said that it would be done. Why has no progress been made at all? Why no action?

Charles Clarke: There has been a great deal of progress. The fact is, as I hope both sides of the House will recognise, that the key to solving asylum issues lies in international action, and in particular in action together with our EU colleagues. Since the discussions at Thessaloniki to which the hon. Gentleman refers, there has been a substantial advance by many colleagues in the EU analysing the best ways to proceed, so there has been great progress since then.

Keith Vaz: May I welcome my right hon. Friend to his new position? I am absolutely certain that he will serve with great distinction in that office. Will he assure the House that if these processing centres are set up outside the United Kingdom in the countries of origin of the people who make the applications, that will in no way divert resources from the immigration and nationality directorate, that general immigration work does need to be dealt with as quickly and as efficiently as possible, and that we should ensure that the good start that began in 1997 is continued, so that people have decisions as quickly as possible?

Anne Campbell: Will my hon. Friend consider whether local authority intervention is necessary in the use of dispersal orders? My local authority, which is Liberal Democrat controlled, voted against the principle of dispersal orders in 2003, voted to use them in 2004, and is now considering whether to renew their use in 2005. Such dithering and delay has a bad effect on some of my constituents.

Hazel Blears: The hon. Gentleman will know that in the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, we strengthened the powers to act against gatherings of people in the very circumstances that he describes. We are trying to work across government not only through the Anti-social Behaviour Act, but by working with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on town centre guidance. We are also working with young people themselves to ensure that we can divert many more of them away from antisocial behaviour and into more constructive activities. This Government have a very good joined-up policy across the piece.

Hazel Blears: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The way in which the orders are framed means that a superintendent of police has to suggest the order, but must get the agreement of the local authority for it to be made. Fundamental to the use of the dispersal power is that kind of partnership working to ensure that the local authority is drawn into the process and that the issue is not simply about enforcement. The whole of our antisocial behaviour strategy is about a twin-track approach of tough enforcement and support, particularly for young people, to get them involved in a range of activities so that we can prevent them from getting on to that cycle of crime and disorder for the future. We have to have tough enforcement to ensure that communities such as that of my hon. Friend are protected from the sort of harassment and intimidation that all too often take place in this country.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: If he will make a statement on the rules for application for a British passport.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: May I thank the Minister for the constructive discussions that we have had about the case of my constituent, Captain Warwick Strong, who served Her Majesty's armed forces loyally in the most severe trouble spots of the world and was prepared to lay down his life, but who, because of the regulations, was not in the United Kingdom on the qualifying day five years before his application in 2002? It seems now that he is eligible for indefinite leave to remain and hence for a British passport afterwards. Will the Minister give me an assurance that these applications, in a full, open and deserving way, will be fast tracked?

Hazel Blears: I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in commending the work of the partnership in Scarborough, which has been so effective in tackling binge drinking. Like many other seaside towns, Scarborough sometimes experiences a particular problem with its night-time economy. My hon. Friend makes the point that the problem is a matter for not only the police, but local authorities and transport operators, and we all have a responsibility to try to make our communities safer. I shall be delighted to consider my hon. Friend's kind invitation to have a day out—or perhaps a night out—in Scarborough in the new year.

Bob Laxton: Is my hon. Friend aware that the cost of the new licensing arrangements that will be undertaken by local authorities will hammer them considerably financially? My own local authority, Derby city council, has estimated that it will find some of those costs punitive. Much as it supports the new arrangements, as do I, the Home Office needs to consider the heavy costs and financial burden that they will impose on local authorities.

Hazel Blears: The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the alcohol industry, in common with most sectors, has some extremely good operators who want to get rid of the rogue element in their industry, but some irresponsible people are still running promotions such as, "All you can drink for £10." We are determined to ensure that we drive out such irresponsible marketing, which is why we are working on a code of practice to ensure that we have decent standards in the alcohol industry. This Government are unprecedented in terms of the attention that they have given to that problem. I entirely reject the notion that we are not tackling those interests head on, because we are absolutely determined to try to change the culture. That is very difficult in this country, but we have to do it because these are very serious problems indeed.

Home Owners' Rights

Paul Goggins: I am not afraid of face-to-face discussion; indeed, I greatly welcome it. That was not the suggestion that the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) made. I am prepared to discuss the specific measure now, from the Dispatch Box and, indeed, at any time, just as I would be prepared to discuss issues with any hon. Member.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned the phrase, "grossly disproportionate", and I look forward to other opportunities of hearing his definition of the phrase. The Crown Prosecution Service would be required to make a judgment, as it does at the moment, about what constitutes "reasonable". He may be interested in the comment of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who told The Sunday Telegraph that he would look for clear evidence of excessive force before considering a prosecution. If it is not excessive, it is reasonable. That is an excellent starting point for our considerations.

Fiona Mactaggart: I understand from the Chief Constable of the West Midlands that at 30 November, there were 302 full-time equivalent dedicated traffic police officers in his force, 38 of whom operated in Coventry. A further 89 full-time equivalent posts are allocated to the central motorway policing group.

Caroline Flint: As I said to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) a short moment ago, cannabis use among young people has been going down in recent years, but we still take the problem very seriously. That is why we have the Blueprint education project—one of the first longitudinal studies that examines how children in years 11 and 12 can better understand drugs and their implications and dangers. We need to have a credible message about these issues. FRANK, which was launched in May 2003, has had 3.5 million visits to its website, and 657,000 phone calls have been made to the service. That shows that there is information out there for families and young people—but we should never be complacent about such issues, and we need to ensure that we continue to drive down the number of people who peddle drugs. The Drugs Bill will do that by, for example, making it an aggravating factor to sell drugs near schools or use children as couriers.

David Borrow: A few months ago, as part of the parliamentary police scheme, I visited the Tower project, run by Lancashire police in Blackpool, which works with persistent offenders who are drug users, enabling them to break their drug habit. That has led to a 30 per cent. reduction in acquisitive crime in Blackpool. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is an example of how joined-up police work can achieve the results that we all want—less drug use and less acquisitive crime? Will she commend the Lancashire police for their work, and does she agree that such a scheme could be adopted in other parts of the country?

Derek Wyatt: We are grateful for the many more police officers, community support officers and neighbourhood wardens, but will my right hon. Friend include the funding of neighbourhood watch schemes in the totality of crime prevention? We think that a very good idea.

Bob Russell: The Secretary of State might wish to know that in the past few days Essex police has called up for training as potential police officers some 50 people, who have been waiting for well over a year to be called into the police force. Can he confirm that the minute they begin training, they will appear on the roll as police officers, is such recruitment going on around the country, and does it have anything to do with 5 May?

Charles Clarke: First, crime has reduced under this Government, not increased, and in that regard the contrast between our record and our predecessors' is dramatic. Secondly, the shadow Chancellor is making these Conservative policies, which state explicitly that in real terms there would be no extra money for policing; in fact, as with everything else, there would be a real terms cut in spending. I wish Conservative Members would own up to that fact.

Des Browne: Thanks principally to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), we have further plans to improve existing security in the ports to France and others. Following the recent meeting between my right hon. Friend and the French Interior Minister at Calais on 15 November, we announced the roll-out of further UK detection technology to the port of Dunkirk by summer 2005. We continue to work with our EU partners to drive down on illegal entry across the EU with regular exchanges of intelligence and regular joint operations impacting on organised human smuggling. Indeed, on 14 December, as a result of one of those operations, we saw the conviction of Mohammed Shahzad, who was sentenced to four years' imprisonment on the charge of conspiring to facilitate illegal entry to the UK.

Vera Baird: The "No Witness, No Justice" scheme is very good. It is primarily about providing information about the case and getting rid of any obstacles that stop people coming to court. However, there is more to getting people to court than transport and child care. It is often about criminally injured victims needing specialist support from domestic violence advocates or rape crisis services, for example. There are real concerns now that the police and the CPS are starting to see witness care as a monopoly and are discouraging specialist referrals. Will my hon. Friend ensure that all witness care units take the approach taken by my own in Cleveland, which is to set up a directorate of help groups and actively take responsibility for facilitating specialist contact where it is needed?

Charles Clarke: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the statement that I made last Thursday 16 December 2004. Let me reaffirm that the case is about the compatibility of our domestic legislation with the European convention on human rights. As the Human Rights Act 1998 makes clear, Parliament remains sovereign and it is ultimately for Parliament to decide whether and what changes should be made to the law.

David Heath: I think I welcome the Home Secretary's rather brief and complacent reply. The judgment of the Law Lords was in terms of unprecedented condemnation and could not have been more unequivocal. Lord Hoffmann said that the case called into question
	"the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention."
	That has now been reinforced by the resignation of Mr. Ian MacDonald as special advocate, in response to what he termed an "odious" law. He is not alone in that opinion.
	Will the Home Secretary accept that the Liberal Democrats fully understand the difficult balance between ensuring the safety of the public and the security of the nation on the one hand, and rights under law on the other? We did not expect the Home Secretary precipitately to set aside the judgment of his predecessor as to the national interest, but can it really be the case that his Department has made no contingency plans for the present circumstances? What work, if any, has been done to explore the eminently sensible suggestions of the Newton committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights? Specifically, when will he bring forward legislation on the use of intercept evidence, and why are the Bills currently before the House not suitable for that purpose?
	Those detainees should be prosecuted and tried. Clearly there are difficulties, but should we not now seek consensus in this House on a proper solution? Certainly we would be happy to work with the Home Secretary and with others to develop an appropriate solution to the problem. However, simply renewing the present deeply unsatisfactory legislation is not an option.

Frank Dobson: I welcome the Home Secretary's statement. As one of those who voted for the Act that the House of Lords has decided is contrary to the human rights legislation, for which I also voted, I recognise the major dilemma that the Government face in trying to reconcile maintaining the security of the people of this country with our treasured reputation for the rule of law and the maintenance of natural justice. So in the spirit in which the Home Secretary has made his statement, I urge him to look now carefully at the proposals from the Newton committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The objective of terrorists is, in the end, to persuade us to bring our sacred institutions into disrepute so that we can be mocked throughout the world as hypocrites. I know that he recognises that, and I hope that the House will be able to come up with proposals that reconcile the two needs.

Jean Corston: I welcome my right hon. Friend's answer to this question and congratulate him on emphasising that he will proceed cautiously. Reference has been made to the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which, as he knows, I chair. I urge him to consider one of our recommendations; that intercept material should be admissible in court, as it is in many other countries. Will he confirm whether he will discuss with our security services ways in which that material can be admissible, while protecting personnel and methods?

Jeremy Corbyn: Would the Home Secretary care to reflect that the big problem with the legislation is that it gives him the power to imprison foreign nationals, which is obviously discriminatory? Does he not think that we have crossed a rather dangerous rubicon, in that politicians, rather than independent courts acting under the criminal law, are allowed to imprison people?

Douglas Hogg: The right hon. Gentleman will know that I have opposed the powers since their introduction. Any legislation that he brings forward must reflect the judgment of the highest court in the land. He must do away with the right to hold people in detention indefinitely. Should he not be trying to create an offence of associating with terrorists or terrorism, which might, in appropriate circumstances, lead to a custodial sentence?

Nick Palmer: Few of us envy the Home Secretary in the current dilemma, any more than we did his predecessor, who I am also extremely pleased to see in the Chamber. Many of us who feel that there is excessive hysteria about asylum issues in general still do not feel that it will be possible to defend free entry to Britain for people whom we believe to wish to support terrorist acts in Britain. I consulted constituents on this last year, and my impression is that there would be widespread support for powers to prosecute people for co-operation with terrorists—I say co-operation rather than mere association—as an alternative to detention under current law, and that that should apply to British nationals as well as to foreign nationals. Will the Home Secretary consider that in his review?

Charles Clarke: I will consider that, but my hon. Friend used the word "envy" in an interesting way when he said that he did not envy me or my predecessors the responsibility here. There is a key point here. If we choose to live in a democracy, we have to face up to the responsibilities of that and take the decisions necessary to ensure that we continue to live in a democracy. That may not be enviable, but it is not only my responsibility and the responsibility of other Members of the Government; it is for all Members of the House to think how to carry out such responsibilities properly. I would argue that that extends to wider groups in society as well. It is not a question of me having a particularly unenviable responsibility; it is a question of all of us facing up to our responsibility to preserve democracy when it is under these kind of threats. I am glad that the issue will be debated in the House in the new year so that we can consider how to address it.

Tony Blair: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a statement on the European Council that took place in Brussels on 16 and 17 December.
	I begin by congratulating Prime Minister Balkenende and the Dutch Government on their handling of the Council and, indeed, on their entire presidency. I also want to congratulate the presidency on achieving the historic agreement to begin accession negotiations with Turkey. This is a hugely important and welcome moment for Europe. Turkey lies at the intersection of three areas of strategic importance to Europe—the middle east, central Asia and the Balkans. So a stable and democratic Turkey will help to strengthen our influence and role in all three areas.
	Turkey is an important and trusted NATO ally. It will take over the international security assistance force lead from Britain in Afghanistan and replace Eurocorps in Kabul next February. Turkey is a strongly growing economy which, as a market of 70 million people, imports over €40 billion worth of goods from the EU each year. Our own trade with Turkey is now over £4 billion a year and is growing at some 30 per cent. annually.
	Turkey beginning negotiations to join the EU shows that those who believe that there is some fundamental clash of civilisations between Christian and Muslim are wrong. Muslim, Christian and other religious faiths, can work together in democratic, tolerant and multicultural societies. Turkey's membership is therefore of fundamental importance for the future peace and prosperity of Britain, Europe and the wider world.
	The European Council agreed that Turkey should begin negotiations on 3 October 2005, during the British presidency of Europe. Before this happens, however, Turkey will need to complete its latest reform package. The Turkish Prime Minister, Mr. Erdogan, confirmed during the European Council that he was ready to sign before 3 October the protocol to the Ankara agreement extending the European Union and Turkey customs union to the 10 new EU member states. That does not constitute formal legal recognition of the Republic of Cyprus. The accession negotiations thereafter are likely to last at least a decade. Turkey's performance, including in relation to respect for fundamental freedoms and human rights, will be closely monitored, and we will want to see a satisfactory track record of implementation before each of the negotiating chapters is closed. Moreover, there is the option of long transition periods, derogations or even permanently available safeguards, should these be required.
	It is worth emphasising how much Turkey has achieved under Prime Minister Erdogan's leadership. He has now taken through nine separate packages of legislative and constitutional reform, bringing the military under civilian control, improving minority rights, abolishing the death penalty, significantly improving freedom of expression, liberalising the economy and reforming the penal code. Those reforms must continue, but this House should recognise the extraordinary progress that has been made. The developments in Turkey over the past two years, following the reforms across central and eastern Europe of the last decade, surely demonstrate the influence and power of the European Union as a motor for change and a force for good.
	There were other significant decisions at this European Council. We confirmed the conclusion of accession negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania. Both should join in January 2007. We decided to begin accession negotiations with Croatia on 17 March 2005, subject to its full co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal. We decided on several new areas of action and co-operation in the fight against terrorism.
	We welcomed the agreement reached with Iran on nuclear issues and future co-operation, following negotiations conducted by the UK, France and Germany. If, however, this process is to succeed, as we all want, Iran must sustain its full suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.
	The European Council confirmed its full backing for next year's elections in Iraq and its commitment to support them, finance UN protection and provide continuing reconstruction assistance. The violence and terror directed against Iraqis wanting to have free elections should simply make us redouble our efforts to ensure that democracy defeats terror and those elections take place. Whatever the original disagreement over the conflict in Iraq, I am pleased to say that that is a unified European position today.
	We also committed ourselves to support financially, technically and politically the democratic transition in the occupied Palestinian territories, and we reaffirmed our commitment to achieving through the road map a negotiated two-state solution. Finally, we committed ourselves to helping to ensure that the rerun of the elections in Ukraine is free and fair, including through sending a substantial number of EU observers.
	At this European Council, we achieved an historic British objective with the decision to begin accession negotiations with Turkey during the British presidency next year. If evidence is needed of the benefits of positive engagement and leadership in Europe, here it is, and I commend it to the House.

Tony Blair: First, let me deal with the issues that occupied us at the Council. In relation to the middle east peace process, we are in agreement that it is important that we move that forward. I am confident that Iran will honour its obligations. I hope very much that it will; if it does not, we must be prepared to take further action in respect of it. The leadership role that we have been able to exercise with France and Germany has been important at least in getting a bigger measure of co-operation than we have had for many years.
	On the millennium development goals, I agree with what the right hon. and learned Gentleman says about further reform of the common agricultural policy, access to EU markets and the aid programme. All that will have to be negotiated with our partners; that is why it is important that we retain some friends and influence in Europe.
	In relation to the EU budget, we are leading the fight to ensure that there is a limit of 1 per cent. That is our position. Again, we continue to work with other countries on the issues raised by the Court of Auditors.
	In respect of Turkey, of course I agree that it is very clear that it should not be a question of an anti-Islamic EU; I think that that myth has been laid to rest by these successful negotiations in Europe.
	Let me come to the issues that the right hon. and learned Gentleman raised on the EU constitution. First, Turkey is fully in favour of the constitution. I am sorry to have to disappoint him about that. Giscard d'Estaing is actually against Turkey coming into the European Union. He is entitled to take that position. Fortunately, however, Europe has decided that Turkey should come into the European Union.
	As for the right hon. and learned Gentleman's position on the constitution, I have to tell him that as far as I am aware every other Government in Europe is in favour of it. He has no support for his position from any other Government, be it a conservative Government, a social democratic Government or a liberal Government. Has he got any ally in any Government on his position? Absolutely not. So when he talks about how we should use our influence in Europe, the fact of the matter is that he would completely marginalise this country in the European Union.
	Of course, his real desire is not to oppose the constitution, but to renegotiate the existing terms of membership. That is right, is it not? That is the official position of the Conservative party today. It is true that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who was brought back into the shadow Cabinet, says that that would be "easy", but the former Conservative party chairman dismisses it as "virtual reality" and the former Conservative Prime Minister as "absurd". The last Conservative Chancellor said that it would
	"provide a terminal blow to our EU membership or end in . . . a humiliating u-turn".
	The last Conservative Foreign Secretary described it as
	"little more than a euphemism for us to quit Europe".
	Let me read what was recently written by the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo) about the claim by the Leader of the Opposition that anyone not carrying out Conservative commitments would have to resign. He said:
	"Howard told us that any minister who failed to deliver on commitments would be fired. Perhaps the next Tory Foreign Secretary should keep a signed letter of resignation in his pocket, because it is hard to see how he could extract Britain from Europe's common fisheries policy and social chapter".
	That is the reality. Unless something is renegotiated by agreement, it is not renegotiation. That is why, to be frank, at least the United Kingdom Independence party has an honest position on this. It wants to get Britain out of Europe because it recognises that renegotiation on those terms is not possible. The truth is that the right hon. and learned Gentleman cannot point to a single ally for his renegotiation—not one. [Interruption.] Well, we have tried this before. Who are the allies? Who are the European countries that are allied to him? Can we hear it? Right—silence. He has to get all the other 24, then 26, then 27 to agree. It is a fantasy policy. It is dishonest as a policy, because it says that one can do something that everyone knows cannot be done. He may say that it is supported by the British people, but I doubt it in the end. I think that the British people will understand that getting this country out of Europe is a mistake—that it would isolate us unnecessarily and do damage to our business and industry. That is why I believe that the Conservative party continues, on this issue and others, to be unelectable.

Charles Kennedy: I thank the Prime Minister for his statement on the significant summit of a few days ago. Does he agree, when we hear some of the sceptical sounds that are made about Europe, that after a summit that has welcomed the finalising of accession treaties with Romania and Bulgaria and set dates for their accession, thereby opening important accession discussions with Turkey and also Croatia, it is a bit odd that all the welcome new countries—democracies emerging from the shadow of the cold war—are queueing up to join the institution, while others would have us believe it is a manifest disgrace and disability to us all? People should reflect on that when they hear some of the nonsense that is talked about the welcome progress on the European front.
	Does the Prime Minister agree that opening discussions with Turkey sends a positive signal about the European Union to the rest of the world? The European Union is open, secular and united by democracy and human rights. Given that, will the Prime Minister go a little further than he went in his statement about how he—or the Foreign Secretary—views the squaring of the circle regarding Cyprus and the legitimate, continuing interests of our country in that context? I appreciate that that is a difficult question.
	Given the Home Secretary's answer to an urgent question earlier, does the Prime Minister find it difficult when attending European summits to square indefinite detention without trial at Belmarsh with the statement in the summit's conclusions:
	"Efforts to combat terrorism must respect human rights and fundamental freedom"?
	We all agree with that, but it does not sit comfortably with the exchanges in the Chamber a few moments ago.
	The Prime Minister properly referred to Iraq. Will he give us some indication of the Government's current thinking on possible requirements for the deployment of more British troops in Iraq? Did he have a chance at the summit to speak to his Polish opposite number about Iraq? Poland confirmed only last week that it will pull out 1,700 troops—approximately half its force—from Iraq in February. Against the electoral timetable, which we all support, that raises legitimate anxieties about what further commitment, if any, may be required from our country and armed forces.

Tony Blair: We have made it clear that people in this country will have a vote and the final say in a referendum. However, what is the sensible position for a Government to take? We appreciate that, in the end, the question will be put to the British people, but is it sensible for a Government who have to work in Europe and who welcome the new countries that are joining to take a position that is so at odds with every other Government in Europe?
	The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy) mentioned Turkey. Of course, I hope that Turkey would have made progress on democratic and political rights in any event, but European Union membership has played a dramatically important part in ensuring consent in countries for the big process of change. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Cyprus. Under the first EU presidency in 1998, when we dealt with Turkey and Cyprus, I personally would have found it inconceivable that we could get Turkey to support the Kofi Annan plan. The fact is that it did support that plan. Indeed, it was the Greek Cypriots who, in the end, rejected it. That will have to be resolved by negotiation, but it is a sign of just how much Turkey has changed under this magnet of EU membership.
	In respect of Belmarsh, I obviously cannot agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but I would just make this point. Of course it is extremely important to pay close attention to the civil liberties of our citizens—indeed, this Government incorporated the human rights legislation in British law—but I hope people also understand this from the position of decision takers, who are desperately anxious to prevent terrorist attacks in this country in circumstances where there are people who our security and police services are telling us are a direct threat to this country's security, who are free to leave this country at any time, and who do not have rights of citizenship here.
	In those circumstances, we have tried to constrain how we act as much as possible to make it compatible with human rights. Of course I understand people's concerns—I do not disrespect them at all—but I think that our primary responsibility has to be to protect the lives of the citizens of this country. As we have seen from 11 September, from Madrid and elsewhere, there are terrorists, I am afraid, who are prepared to cause destruction on a massive scale.
	Incidentally, it is true to point out also that many other European countries have very tough security legislation. It is not always the same as ours, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that it is also very tough. Just as I came into the Chamber, I heard an Opposition Member talking about a possible criminal offence in respect of the right of association. That is a very wide criminal offence to introduce. It applies in certain other European countries, but frankly it gives rise to exactly the same debate about civil liberties as we are having over Belmarsh.
	Finally, in relation to Iraq and troop requirements, it is correct that some of the 11 or 12 European countries with troops in Iraq will be either reducing their capability or pulling out, mainly because they have already taken a position to end their troop deployment in Iraq at a particular time. However, at the same time we are building up the Iraq security forces. We keep the question of additional troops under review the whole time, but we have no current plans to deploy.

Tony Blair: I take the point that my hon. Friend makes. We strongly support the EU commitment to end the isolation of Turkish Cypriots. That is one of the issues that we have discussed before at the European Council. Direct flights to the north of Cyprus would of course contribute towards ending that isolation, but this is an immensely complex legal area, although we are examining the issue. We also support proposals from the European Commission for direct trade between north Cyprus and the EU and financial aid to north Cyprus. We are working to ensure that those are agreed on, so I hope we show that we are in some earnest and have good intentions in that regard. I hope that, over time, we will be able to see the negotiation of a satisfactory solution to Cyprus.

Ian Davidson: May I urge the Prime Minister to ignore the voices of those Euro-enthusiasts who not only welcome the discussions with Turkey but urge its immediate full entry into the European Union; because full entry means freedom of movement? All the evidence is that currently up to 30 million Turks would wish to move to the west. May I urge him to reject that policy, which has been advanced by the Liberal Democrats, and to stick to the Government policy, with "the option of long transition periods, derogations, or even permanently available safeguards, should those be required"?

Tony Blair: I profoundly disagree with my hon. Friend, not just with what he said, but with the tone of what he said. It would not be helpful or sensible to start having a debate about Turkish membership of the European Union on the basis that millions of Turks are about to flood across Europe. That is not what has happened in respect of the eastern European countries that have come in: the vast majority of the people who have come here have come to do jobs. A tiny number of them have even made benefit claims, and the vast bulk of those have had those claims refused.
	A lot of people who come to this country make a vital contribution to it. There will be a significant period of time before Turkey becomes a member of the European Union, and, as my hon. Friend acknowledged in the latter part of his question, there will then be a series of safeguards, transitional periods and so on available to us. Of course, Turkey will be a very different country by that time. It has made remarkable strides, under the impulsion of European Union membership, over the past few years, and I am sure that a democratic and stable Turkey, anchored in the European Union, will be a very important part of our security for the future.

John Gummer: Does the Prime Minister accept that even those of us who are not as enthusiastic as he is about Turkey's membership of the European Union will point out the attraction of the EU to the many countries that want to join it? Central to that attraction is democracy and the rule of law, so how can he go on talking as he does, given what is happening in Guantanamo Bay and in Belmarsh? Is it not true that we need to put those things right before Turkey will listen to what we are asking it to do?

Tony Blair: We have made clear on a number of occasions the position concerning the British detainees in Guantanamo Bay; Belmarsh, however, is a different situation. Those detained there are free to leave the country, and some actually have. The right hon. Gentleman faced this problem when he was in government; indeed, for a considerable time back then, the Labour party was probably on the other side of the argument in this House concerning prevention of terrorism legislation. We do not in any way dismiss the argument about the civil liberties of those detained in Belmarsh. However, given what we know these people are capable of, given that our security services tell us that there is a reasonable suspicion that they are plotting terrorist activity, given that we have gone through a judicial process—albeit one that is not in accordance with the normal procedures of law, but which was headed by a High Court judge—and given that these people are actually free to leave this country, I, as a decision taker, having taken account of the civil liberties argument, must in the end put the security of the British people first.
	Our security services indicated that if we let such people out, we could not guarantee that we could survey them adequately, or that we would not lose some of them. This issue is difficult and we must return to it repeatedly, argue about it in this House and in the media, and have a public debate on it. My belief, on balance, is that we have to maintain this position, but in pointing to my belief I do not dismiss the right hon. Gentleman's argument. I simply say, as he knows from when he was in government, that it is a heavy responsibility to allow out on our streets people whom we know or believe may want to cause death and destruction to our citizens.

Tony Blair: What the last two years show is the validity and importance of Europe working together—for example, in respect of Iran and, more recently, Ukraine. It also shows clearly that when Britain decides as a sovereign country to go its own way and disagree with other European countries, as over Iraq, it can do so. Those years also show that there are other issues, such as the middle east peace process, in respect of which we are somewhere between the two. That demonstrates the importance and common sense of Europe co-operating where it can and wants to, and of this country being free to run its foreign and defence policy when it needs to. That is precisely the situation that will be maintained under the new European constitutional treaty.

Patrick McLoughlin: The Prime Minister said that
	"we committed ourselves to helping to ensure that the re-run of the elections in Ukraine is free and fair".
	I am sure that we would all hope that that is the case. He also said that the Government would send a substantial number of observers. Does he think that a substantial number of observers should be sent to the Iraq elections, and would they be safe?

Oliver Heald: On behalf of the Opposition, I join the Leader of the House in his tribute to Sir Michael Cummins, the 37th Serjeant at Arms—a post first established in 1415. During his 23 years here, he has made a huge contribution to the work of the Serjeant at Arms Department, since 1995, as deputy Serjeant, and during the last four years as the Serjeant.
	As has been mentioned, Sir Michael oversaw the opening of Portcullis House, the new parliamentary building that has done a huge amount to improve the work of this place. He has also overseen the major development of information technology, which now has a department of its own.
	During this period, there has been a large increase in the number of people visiting Parliament and I know how pleased Sir Michael has been that so many have been able to enjoy that experience. Inevitably, he has overseen an extension of our security precautions, but has always borne in mind the wish of the House that this place be accessible to our constituents. He has shown great dignity in the face of some unfair criticism.
	In implementing all those changes, Sir Michael has shown great skill and been unfailingly courteous. During my time on the Administration Committee, I remember the helpful way in which he addressed the ideas of individual members, while always seeking to ensure that the most adventurous ideas were very fully scrutinised before being implemented. As a result, many of them did not see the light of day.
	Sir Michael was able to bring a wealth of knowledge to the discussion of all areas under his responsibility, including security, where he had detailed knowledge of the work of other Parliaments. I know that members of the House of Commons Commission found that particularly useful.
	Michael Cummins has served his country well as a soldier and in his work in the House. We wish him and his wife Catherine a long and happy retirement in Pimlico. I am sure that we all hope to see them visit this place regularly. Perhaps Sir Michael will find more time to enjoy his recreations of tapestry and equitation—although I suggest that he should not try them both at the same time.

Patrick McLoughlin: I rise briefly on behalf of the Joint Committee on Security, the advisory Committee of both Houses that makes recommendations on security to the Speaker and the Lord Chancellor regarding the Parliamentary estate. Sir Michael has, like his predecessors, been one of our principal advisers and has attended the Committee for almost 10 years, first as the deputy Serjeant and then as the Serjeant. The Committee is chaired by the Government deputy Chief Whip and its members include the hon. Members for Knowsley, South (Mr. O'Hara), for Stockport (Ms Coffey) and for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell), and my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack). Committee members expressed their gratitude to the Serjeant for his long and dedicated service at their last meeting.
	As hon. Members have said, over a difficult period during which Sir Michael has often been criticised unfairly, he has displayed a dignity and loyalty to Parliament that is much to be admired. He has been a superb Officer of the House, combining industry, integrity, a lightness of touch and a ready sense of humour. He will be greatly missed and we wish him well in his retirement.
	Question put and agreed to.

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	The discussion is an important milestone in the lengthy dialogue that the country has had on identity cards. The debate is of long standing, but it has increased in intensity in the aftermath of the terrorist atrocities in the United States on 11 September 2001. However, the Bill needs to be considered on broader issues than matters of national security alone.
	In preparation for the legislation, we have had a six-month public consultation exercise, an inquiry by the Select Committee on Home Affairs and further consultation on a draft Bill. The Government have listened carefully to the many comments that were received. Changes have been made both to the Bill that we are debating and the plans for delivering the scheme.
	I assure the House that the Government and I will continue to listen to and act on constructive comments and proposals as the Bill goes through its various stages, but I want to emphasise that, both in principle and in practice, the case for it is in my opinion very strong. Quite apart from the security advantages, there will be enormous practical benefits. ID cards will potentially make a difference to any area of everyday life in which one already has to prove one's identity. Examples are opening a bank account, going abroad on holiday, claiming a benefit, buying goods on credit and renting a video. The possession of a clear, unequivocal and unique form of identity, in the shape of a card linked to a database holding biometrics, will offer significant benefits of various types.
	Moreover, the help that the cards can offer in tackling fraud will save tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money. Some £50 million a year is claimed illegally from the benefit systems alone through the use of false identities—money that could of course be far better spent on other public services.

Charles Clarke: I shall make a bit more progress and then give way to another Liberal Democrat.
	The point that I want to emphasise in considering this question is that the drive towards secure identity is happening all over the world. For example, under current plans, from next autumn, British tourists who need a new passport will have to have a biometric one to visit the United States, or a biometric visa instead. We will rightly have to bear the costs of introducing the new technology to enhance our passports in any case, but I believe that we should take the opportunity of that investment to secure wider benefits, such as those that I have just set out.
	The security issues here are critical and they need to be faced up to by those who oppose the introduction of the scheme. It is the case that a secure identity scheme will help to prevent terrorist activity, more than a third of which makes use of false identities. [Interruption.] A third of terrorist activities make use of false identities and we need an identification process to deal with that. It will make it far easier to address the vile trafficking in vulnerable human beings, which ends in appalling tragedies, and the exploitative near slave labour or forced prostitution that exists as a result of the traffic in people. It will reduce, as we have just discussed, identity fraud, which now costs the United Kingdom more than £1.3 billion every year.

Roger Gale: The Home Secretary is trying to have it both ways. On the radio at lunchtime, the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration said that this was a voluntary scheme, not a compulsory one. That is literally the case, although clauses 6 and 7 allow the Home Secretary to introduce a compulsory scheme. The Minister was than asked how the scheme would be of value to the police if it was not compulsory. Frankly, he did not have an answer. What he said was that there will be a biometric register. Will it include everyone? Because if not, how will it help people like me, who go out on the streets as a policeman?

Charles Clarke: Let me very clear. If there are hon. Members who are opposed in all circumstances to a compulsory system, they should vote against the Bill. The legislation sets out clearly a process that could lead to a compulsory system at the end, but it does it by a process of voluntary change in taking the matter forward. That is the right process of reform; it is perfectly reasonable, and it is the way we should go. If the hon. Gentleman says that in no circumstances that he can ever foresee should there ever be a system of compulsion, he should certainly vote against the system.

Charles Clarke: I accept the second part of my right hon. Friend's remarks. Identity cards have got popular support, but it is important to emphasise that the Government's case does not rest on the fact that the legislation has popular support, because the legislation is merited in its own terms.
	I am grateful for my right hon. Friend's remarks about the report in The Guardian. I assure her Select Committee that the Government will fully co-operate as the Committee seeks to inquire further.
	It is frustrating that so much of the identity cards debate centres around matters that the Government are not proposing and, in some cases, have never proposed, and I should like to address some of those myths. In my opinion, it is entirely false to claim that ID cards will erode our civil liberties, re-visit "1984", usher in the Big Brother society or establish some kind of totalitarian police state.

Charles Clarke: I will repudiate the Information Commissioner's remarks. I do not accept that identity cards will change the relationship between the citizen and the state as fundamentally as the Information Commissioner suggests. The relationship between the citizen and the state was not transformed in 1837 when people in England and Wales were required to register the birth of a child, which is the example that I gave earlier, or on any of the many other occasions since then when means of identification have been introduced by statute. There are issues about the relationship between the individual and the state, but, in my opinion, they are not about this Bill and ID cards.
	We are clearly moving towards a compulsory ID-card scheme, because we believe that the state has a duty to protect its citizens from the misuse of their identities and to give them a means to interact simply and securely with public services. However, we are not looking to create a new culture of identification in which people are asked to confirm their identity more frequently than they are now. I must also make it clear that we have never proposed and do not propose a scheme under which it would be compulsory to carry a card. That was ruled out in the 2002 consultation paper and again in the draft Bill, and clause 15(3) of this Bill still rules it out.

Win Griffiths: Given that schedule 1 provides for the possibility of holding 27 or more pieces of information about an individual on the register, what guarantees can my right hon. Friend give that the system will be hacker- proof?

Charles Clarke: The comfort I can offer is to study carefully the content of the Bill. Going through it as I have sought to do in my general introduction thus far, the fact is that we are not extending the rights of the state vis-à-vis the individual through these measures. We are producing a significant change, which will allow a state of affairs whereby people's identification can be more clearly known. The effect of that approach will be to improve services, improve security and improve the public conduct of life in a variety of different ways. I argue that this legislation is an enhancement, not an inhibition, of civil liberties.
	If the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) wants to invite me to go down the path of a written constitution, I will not follow him. I do not think that that is the right way to proceed. On the other aspects, I believe that we are in the right place.
	I want to conclude by going through the central clauses very rapidly. First, on the national identity register and its statutory purposes, the key is set out in clauses 1 to 3 and schedule 1. It is the secure record of identity that is important, not the card itself. That is a vital aspect to understand in the overall proposals. The statutory purposes cited in clause 1(3) show that ID cards are, first, to provide people with a convenient method of proving their own identify and, secondly, to help to verify people's identity when that is in the wider public interest. National security will be improved, illegal working attacked more effectively, immigration controls enforced more directly, and crime prevented and detected more effectively. It is also important that the register is accurate and remains so. Those points have been raised in the debate and clause 11 requires that to be the case.

Charles Clarke: Then let me speak directly to Conservative Members, Madam Deputy Speaker, to conclude what I have to say.
	The Bill is important for the future economy and security of our society. It is important to get it right. I am delighted that the shadow Home Secretary and the leader of the Conservative party have decided to support the legislation, which is the right thing to do. I say to every Conservative Member, as I do to Liberal Democrat Members, that they, like all of us, must face up to our responsibilities in the modern world to take forward the system in the right way.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Would the House please come to order.

David Davis: May I start by reiterating my welcome to the new Home Secretary? He will perhaps be pleased to hear that not all our debates are quite this exciting.
	The Home Secretary inherits a difficult job: one that always requires a keen sense of the balance between the interests of the citizen and the role of the state. It is the first duty of the state to protect the lives of citizens, but the duty to protect life must be balanced by the duty to protect our way of life. Nowhere is that more evident than in the debate about identity cards that we have just heard.
	As I said in the debate on the Queen's Speech, I would not have countenanced ID cards before 11 September. After that, however, I accept that we must consider them. After 11 September, it is incumbent on all of us to examine carefully any measures which might enhance the nation's security. Identity cards introduced properly and effectively may help to do that.
	None the less, it is worth remembering that the Bill will not see ID cards introduced to Britain tomorrow. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has acknowledged that the process is going to take "many, many years". This legislation merely establishes the framework necessary for their introduction. It is vital for us to consider that framework carefully and to get that consideration right.

David Davis: My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, to which I shall return when I talk about privacy and civil liberties. I do not agree with the Home Secretary that this is not a matter of civil liberties. There is an important balance here which we have to strike.
	There are several other reasons why the Bill deserves detailed consideration.

Several hon. Members: rose—

David Davis: I give way to the hon. Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan).

Bill Tynan: Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that biometrics is the best and securest technology available, or is he aware of another technology that would deal with the problems that he describes?

Several hon. Members: rose—

David Davis: I give way to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten).

Mark Oaten: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. The issue is not just the effectiveness of biometrics, but the root or "seed" documents by which people obtain such information. If a terrorist were to bring in a false birth certificate, it could easily be accepted; as a result, they would have an identity linked to that document. How do we overcome that problem?

Des Browne: The right hon. Gentleman is extremely generous in allowing interventions. Given the number of Members who want to speak in this debate, I suspect that I will not get a significant amount of time in which to wind it up. As he well knows, the Government signed up to the principle, which we accept, that we cannot require from EU citizens such registration until they have been in the country for more than three months. So the overall legal framework within which we operate requires us to observe that three-month window. If it did not, we would not have been prepared to go down this route, for obvious reasons. That is why we argue in Europe for biometric ID cards, which is what these people used to travel into the country. Biometrics in respect of people outwith the European free travel area are going to become almost compulsory for travel around the world.

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman has made my point for me. As the Liberal spokesman said, one of the main problems is access to the system. If such access is easier in other European countries than it is here, and people can come here for three months, that is a matter that will have to be dealt with. Simple agreement on Europe-wide biometrics is not enough; there will have to be agreement on standards of access, which must be sorted out.

William Cash: Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the fact that Australia had an opportunity to adopt identity cards—initially with considerable enthusiasm? Yet when the facts were known to the people of Australia, there was massive opposition to it and the whole proposal was dropped. Does he not think that, given the interaction of the proposals with the criminal law and the social security system within the EU, there is a real likelihood that the whole process will, through the legal framework of the justice and home affairs system, lead to a European-wide identity system enforceable through those laws by the European Court of Justice? Does he not regard that as an extremely dangerous prospect for 450 million people, quite apart from people in this country?

John Denham: No, I have given way twice.
	One of the areas that we need to consider further is oversight. There has been a welcome broadening of the powers of the commissioner, but he still lacks adequate recourse for an individual who fears that his or her records have been wrongly accessed or used. That recourse needs to be made clear and explicit in the Bill. I also share the concerns of the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) about the mechanism for reporting via the Secretary of State rather than through more open reporting.
	None the less, issues of procurement, biometrics and oversight are things that we should be able to get right as the Bill passes through Parliament. My basic point is that we have a series of problems in our society for which a robust system of identity would help us enormously. An ID card and national identity register would enable us to do that. The fears expressed are, as we have just seen, vague and ill stated. The Bill should go ahead tonight so that we can work on the detail.

Mark Oaten: It is extraordinary and unhelpful; we are being asked to support a Bill and to sign a blank cheque. It is also important to note that there are genuine political issues on where we might spend that money. We might all have different priorities for its most effective use. I would have thought that more police and more intelligence officers to support the system might be more effective in dealing with some of the things that the Government are trying to tackle—not least terrorism.
	I am conscious of the fact that many other hon. Members want to speak, so I shall conclude by considering the database itself. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee was right to identify the fact that although the database is, in many ways, the key issue, there are two issues to consider: the civil liberty implications and, frankly, the Government's inability to run such systems in the first place.
	The Government's track record on IT procurement is awful. The projected cost of the Child Support Agency system was £150 million, but the figure ended up at £450 million. The final cost of the Horizon project—an automated Post Office Counters system—ended up at £1 billion and ran three years late. My particular favourite is the NHS IT programme, with expected costs of £6.2 billion. The actual cost was £18 billion, and the figure is still rising. Of course, recently and more seriously, the national automated fingerprint identification system crashed owing to server software difficulties, causing serious problems for the police.
	How will the database be kept up to date? An earlier intervention pointed out the churn on the electoral roll, with individuals moving many times, people changing their addresses and new individuals coming on when they are 18 years old and others being taken off when they die. The scope for error is absolutely enormous, and the track record suggests that costs will get out of control.
	The more important point, however, relates to the principles of what is held on the data system. What can happen in 15 or 20 years? How can the information be linked, for example, to CCTV systems that can individually scan faces and recognise them? Do we want to move into the kind of society where people know exactly who is walking up and down the high street? Is there even a possibility that a future Home Secretary may decide to tag on DNA information? What would be the implications of adding on the vast amount of DNA information that is already collected?

Mark Oaten: I am conscious of the fact that other hon. Members want to speak.
	Finally, I want to deal with the most farcical element of the Bill: whether the system is voluntary or compulsory. I cannot understand where the Government are heading. Although I would still oppose the system, intellectually it would be a lot better if it were compulsory. That would stack up, and the Home Secretary would have been able to answer the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) because the scheme would have included the powers for which the police might be looking.
	In my village, my neighbours will have to carry an identity card in a few years' time, but I will not have to do so because my passport is not up for renewal until 2012—lucky me—but that is a two-tier system. [Interruption.] The Minister says that people will not have to carry the card, but this is not about whether people have to carry it; it is about whether they must have an ID card in the first place. The problem is that I will not need an ID card, but my neighbours or my wife may have to have one. It will be compulsory for some, but not for others.
	We are walking into a system that is, frankly, chaos. Some people must have the card; some must have one at some point in the future; others will never have to have one because they do not have a passport; but, at an unknown point, which the Home Secretary will decide, we will all need a card. That is a complete mess. A two-tier system will be created in relation to the proof of identity that people will have to carry, and the implications of that are wrong.
	When the card becomes compulsory—I am sure that that is where we are heading—what will it be like for 80 or 90-year-old pensioners to be told that they have to turn up at registration centres to have their fingerprints taken and their irises and photos scanned because the system has suddenly become compulsory. If the Home Secretary thinks that 80 per cent. of people will still be in favour when the public realise that that will happen, he has got another think coming.
	Here we have a £1 billion project that looks set to go over budget, a piece of plastic and a database that will do nothing to tackle terrorism and crime, a system that is neither compulsory nor voluntary and a database that will make the CSA mess up look like a tea party. This is also a debate about changes to our country and to society. If people look like illegal workers or terrorists, they can be stopped. People will have to turn up to centres to have their fingerprints and irises scanned. If they visit a GP or an accident and emergency department, they will have to submit a scan and prove who they are. I urge hon. Members on all sides of the House to reject the Bill. I am afraid that, tonight, a Labour Government, with Conservative support, are turning us from nanny state into a Big Brother state.

Douglas Hogg: I beg to move, To leave out from "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	"this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Identity Cards Bill because it would lead to an unreasonable intrusion into the liberties and privacy of the citizen; it would not achieve benefits proportionate to the cost, as the underlying technology is likely to prove unreliable; and the introduction of such cards is likely to lead to a requirement that they be carried at all times and such a requirement would be objectionable in principle and would lead to serious tension between the police and the citizen."
	The hon. Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick) has made it plain that he will vote against the Bill and so will I. I acknowledge, of course, that there will be benefits attached to identity cards, but the real question is whether those benefits will be proportionate to the various disadvantages that hon. Members have identified; I do not believe that they will be.
	It is worth pointing out, as it has been pointed out before, that most terrorists operate under their true identities, but fail to disclose their intentions. Many countries that have suffered from terrorism—Spain is a good example—have laws that require the carrying and production of ID cards. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said, President Bush, who is surely not a bleeding-heart liberal, has made it plain that ID cards will form no part of his anti-terrorism policy.

Douglas Hogg: No, I am afraid that I must make some progress.
	May I turn to the question of cost? A cost of £3 billion has been suggested, but I do not know whether that is right or wrong. However, I do know that almost every public sector budget ever contemplated has been seriously overrun, so I suspect that that will be the case with ID cards as well. Irrespective of whether the figure will be £3 billion, £1 billion or £5 billion, are there not better ways of spending that money to achieve the intended purposes of the Bill?
	I do not pretend to be an expert on technology, but I have noticed that all major computer schemes introduced by Governments of all shades have experienced appalling problems. The situation in the Child Support Agency is a specific case in point, but we all remember what happened with the Passport Agency. If there is a failure with the identity card system, it could cause not only inconvenience, but grave injustice, people's disentitlement to benefit and perhaps exposure to criminal penalties.
	I shall move on from practicalities to the question of principle; I propose to be brief. There is no doubt that ID cards will tilt the balance away from the citizen towards the state, but we should not do that unless an absolutely compelling case for it can be made. We should be clear about this too: once the possession of cards is mandatory, and perhaps before, the police will use their powers to stop and search in a very vigorous manner. Bearing it in mind that the stated purposes of the scheme are to combat terrorism and illegal immigration, we can also be sure that those powers will be used most vigorously against ethnic minorities. I have been in the House long enough to remember the rows over the stop-and-search powers arising from the Vagrancy Act—the old sus law. The coming rows will be infinitely greater, because these powers will be used to a much greater extent.
	I am absolutely certain that, if we give the green light to the Bill and possession of an identity card becomes a requirement, there will also be a duty to carry the card and produce it on demand. The only way to make the cards truly effective is to require people to carry them and to produce them. We should remember that the National Registration Act 1915 was amended in 1918 to make production on demand mandatory.
	There is no point in saying, "We will give a potential terrorist or illegal immigrant 48 hours in which to produce the card at the nearest police station." That is nonsense: a potential wrongdoer in that category will simply disappear into the hinterland from which he or she may have come. I do not wish to give officers of the state a right to stop me—or anyone else—and demand that I produce a card. Inevitably, those officers of the state would be given a power to arrest if the card cannot be produced. That seems to me to impose a burden on the citizen and give the officers of the state a power that I do not think the House should give them.
	I concede that benefits may attach to ID cards. I accept that the five tests proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) are useful, but we must set the Bill in the overall context of what we are about. I do not think that the arguments advanced in favour of it outweigh the disadvantages that I have ventured to present to the House.

John Barrett: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that having an ID card will not affect entitlement if the individual is lying about their circumstances and that that is the problem that exists as regards benefit fraud and attempting to obtain benefits from the health service that one may not be entitled to? It will not be helped by having an identity card.

John Gummer: I am in favour of identity cards and have always been so, and one must take seriously the pressure for them from the police and the security forces. But I have rarely heard a worse definition or defence of identity cards than the one that I heard from the new Home Secretary. Support for identity cards is rushing away simply because there is a huge lack of trust in the Government. If the Government want what seems to me, and I am prepared to argue the case for, an identity card system, they must address properly the reason why so many sensible people find the proposals unacceptable.
	The Chairman of the Select Committee said that it was hard to understand the opposition. Let me perhaps explain it. In a recent debate—yet another one of those on the subject of the criminal law—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) ended his speech with a peroration, in which he claimed that the former Home Secretary was the most illiberal Home Secretary for a hundred years. Immediately after, the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) chided my right hon. and learned Friend, saying that he had been very unfair to the Home Secretary, that the Home Secretary was not only the most illiberal Home Secretary for the last hundred years, but would be seen as the most illiberal Home Secretary for the next hundred years as well. So there is a pretty universal view that for a long time the Government have been introducing into the House a whole range of legislation that has been opposed strongly by any of us who have freedom and liberty as part of the reason why we were elected. This Government have behaved in a way that explains why people are very suspicious of this proposal.
	I had to ask Mr. Speaker for support when we did not reach a particular amendment after we had been voting on a range of amendments in the last Criminal Justice Act because it was the only amendment during the whole of the proceedings on that legislation on which I would be voting on the right of the Government. In every other case I had been voting on the left of the Government and my constituents were beginning to be rather confused, as indeed I was, on the position in which the Government were putting me.
	So trust is crucial, and when one looks at this motion—one which I have come to support and will vote for—the first thing that I must ask about is the timetable. It is absolutely not possible for the Home Secretary to try to reassure me and my hon. Friends who want to support him that somehow or other there will be a proper debate when we will have a timetable motion that leads us to the end of it before the end of the next month. It is unacceptable. To suggest that we will debate a major change without time for the House to do so properly is yet again showing that the Government do not care about the House of Commons, do not care about proper debate, and believe that it is acceptable to have a few perfunctory discussions and then say that the House of Commons has agreed.
	That is why I have to say that I do not believe that the Home Secretary will get the legislation through in a way that is anything like the present proposals unless he makes some pretty big changes now. If he thinks that I am being overdramatic, I remind him about the casino Bill, which is now a wholly different Bill, so pathetic now that no one could object to it because it does none of the things that the Government promised in the first place. They discovered that what started off as, they thought, a popular move, they themselves made unpopular.
	That is precisely what we have here. We have something that I believe to be right and in the right way could be a help in dealing with both illegal immigration and terrorism, but if presented in the way that the Government have, will be a disaster, and they will find themselves deeply unpopular as a result, in exactly the same way as they have over the casino Bill. They thought that it would be a popular measure, they have managed to make it less popular, and if they go on as they are they will make it totally unpopular.
	The way to change this is, first, to have a Joint Committee of both Houses so that the Bill can be properly considered and Parliament can be known to have given its opinion in a sensible and effective way. A change of this size, of this momentum, needs to have such scrutiny. The fact that the Government have cast it aside is yet again an example of the fact that the Government do not care about the House or Parliament as a whole. We have to press that in any such matter.
	Secondly, the system cannot be run by the Government; it must be run by an independent commissioner who stands outside the Government and who reports to Parliament. There have been two examples of the successful introduction of information technology, both of them by one of the most independent quasi-Government organisations, the Inland Revenue. The Inland Revenue did both extremely well, effectively and to time, but it did it independently, it did it itself, and it does not report directly as is proposed here.
	I want something even more independent than that. I want a body that is clearly independent, which can act only specifically within the terms of the Bill as laid down by the House. I want to remove from the Bill the Government's ability to use affirmative legislation, because people outside think that if a measure is brought before Parliament, there has been a debate. They do not understand our system. They do not know that there is no debate at all and that a measure cannot be defeated because in any circumstances the Government can use their Whip. Therefore, we need a different system.
	If those Opposition Members who agree with the principle of having identity cards, who believe that we cannot say that just because there has been fraud we should not have paper money, for example—we cannot have a system which says that we cannot have anything because there might be abuse; we cannot say that because a measure will soon be outdated we had better not do it at all, or we would never buy a computer; nor can something be opposed because one is so opposed to anything that might be used by the EU that one votes against it in any case; that is barmy and we know exactly why some people are making such points—[Interruption.] There are some hon. Friends behind me whose whole purpose in life is to say those things, but I do not listen to that kind of argument.
	But the Government should listen to the fundamental argument, which is that the people who are friends of passing this legislation cannot agree with it unless it is changed fundamentally during its passage through the House. Although we may vote for it in the first place, we cannot vote for it later unless it is independently scrutinised, is subject to parliamentary decision making, and is clearly restricted to the purposes for which the Government claim that it is introduced. A timetable motion such as this is abhorrent and completely unacceptable in a democratic society. The Government must think again, or they will have the same dog's breakfast with this as they had on the casino Bill and they will have turned a popular measure into a disaster.

Andrew Bennett: Sadly, I shall not be supporting my hon. Friend the Minister in the Lobby tonight. I warn him that, from my long experience in the House, I know that it is always a sign that something is going wrong when those on the two Front Benches support each other. There is also something seriously wrong when as many voices on both sides of the House are questioning their views.
	The first objection is that, if politics is about priorities, we are earmarking far too many resources for the Bill, when we have not got enough resources for many other things that I would like as a socialist. Whether the amount spent is £3 billion, £5 billion or more, I believe that the money would be far better spent on things like eliminating child poverty, providing affordable housing, ensuring that our cities have good public transport systems or care for the elderly. That is where we should be directing our resources, and it is wrong for the Government to be putting such amounts towards the Bill.
	We also have to question the cost to the individual. I have no difficulty if the amount is £70 to £100 for an individual; if a family want to go abroad, they will have to get passports, and if the cost is between £300 and £400, that is perfectly all right. We must, however, face up to the fact that if the Bill is to cut out fraud on benefits, we will have to deal with families on very low incomes. For them, acquiring identity cards for the whole family will be a considerable expense, and it is certainly not something that we should push them into.
	On technology, almost everyone in the House has questioned whether we can introduce the technology for such a scheme. The Child Support Agency, family credits, pensioner credits and all the disasters have been mentioned. The problem with that new technology is not that it fails to deal with 90 or 95 per cent. of cases, but the small 2 or 3 per cent. where a disaster is created. That small percentage will be the problem with ID card technology, whether the difficulties arise in working out the biometrics or other areas. Until we can build into any technological system some way of dealing with those hard cases, we will have a problem. The sad thing is that common sense is not all that common anyway, but as far as computers are concerned, it is absolutely non-existent. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that the crucial thing is how we find a way around those hard cases so that we do not cause a great deal of misery and hardship for people who find it very difficult to get their ID card when people around them are getting cards without any difficulty at all.
	I accept that crime and terrorism can be very effectively dealt with by ID cards, but that can happen only if the cards are compulsory and it is compulsory that everybody carries them all the time. I went to the Soviet Union as a student in 1958, and I was very impressed with a lot of what I saw. One day when I was coming up from the tube, two or three people pushed down the escalator past me going the wrong way. Why were they coming down? At the top, people coming out of the station were being stopped by the police and having their ID checked. If they did not have their ID, they were taken away. If we are prepared to argue for a society in which we have regular police checks at which the ID is demanded and verified, fair enough, but I certainly do not want that sort of society. I am not convinced that the new system will have any impact at all on crime and terrorism unless we travel a distance that I believe is completely unacceptable in this country.
	We must also work out what happens in respect of people who lose their ID card. Constituents come regularly to my advice bureau having lost some crucial piece of paper, and it is often very difficult for them to get a replacement. We cannot make it easy for people to get replacement ID cards, or it will become less and less important for them to look for cards that they have mislaid. Penalties will be needed for people who lose their cards, but those penalties should not be so great as to mean that the ID card becomes another problem for somebody with a chaotic lifestyle.

Andrew Bennett: We have to be very careful with ID cards, and the sensible solution is to let people have the peripheral cards that they currently have, not to insist that they have a national card.
	I intended to be brief, and I come to my last point: the desire to make changes by secondary legislation and the great number of powers in the Bill in respect of which the Government can come back to the House for an order under the affirmative procedure. There is a huge difference between trying to get primary legislation through the House and introducing secondary legislation. Primary legislation takes several months at the quickest and more often than not takes nine months. There is not only the debate in the Chamber and the argument in Committee; it is the debate in the country that is important. That happens on primary legislation, but regulation can be announced one day, and with a big Government majority, it can be introduced within 48 hours or so of publication.
	That is a change in the nature of legislation, and I argue very strongly that we should not have the ID cards legislation at all, and that we should certainly not be introducing in that legislation powers for Governments to fundamentally change it and drift towards what will in effect become a police state. I am totally opposed to the legislation.

Brian Mawhinney: The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) told us that he had changed his mind and that he was now against both the principle and the practice. He voted for the principle earlier in his short parliamentary career, but he did not choose to explain to us why his views on it had changed, although that change appears to have coincided with his appointment to his present responsibilities.
	I, too, have changed my mind, although over a longer period. When I came to this House, I would not have been supportive of the legislation, but I am this evening. I argue that I have changed my mind because the world around me has changed. It has changed in two respects. 9/11, about which much is said and whose trauma is real and far reaching, told us all that we had a new breed of criminal. The subsequent rash of suicide bombers simply reinforces the message that the world of terrorism and criminality has changed.
	However, the other thing that has changed, for better or for worse—I had some reservations as we progressed down this road—is that the state and society in general intrude into my life to a far greater extent than when I first entered this House. My passage down the street is monitored by cameras and my pocket is full of bank cards. The other day, my bank helpfully called me to query what it thought might have been the fraudulent use of one of my credit cards. If the weekend press is to be believed, all hon. Members will soon have to wear their passes in this place for the first time ever. I am inundated by unsolicited commercial mail from people who know about my life, my quality of life and my habits, and who try to turn that information into a commercial project.
	Two and half weeks ago, I went to the United States for my mother-in-law's funeral. In the process, my iris was photographed and my fingerprints were taken. It would be bizarre to argue against this legislation, when I have submitted myself to it in the United States in the past month. The world has changed.
	I had the privilege of being one of five right hon. Members—Privy Councillors—who served on the Select Committee that reviewed the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 and that reported to the Home Secretary some months ago. We were all impressed by the growth of identity theft in not only this country, but on a much wider scale. We made recommendations about the need to tighten the fight against identity theft. Because we were a Committee of Privy Councillors and had had access to the security services and to the police, we could not publish the evidence, but I assure the House that it was real and significant. We should look for new and additional measures to address that problem over and above the more traditional approaches.
	I respect the opposition to the Bill because, as I have said, I might have been part of it. One of the inadequacies of the argument against the Bill is that the excellent must be the enemy of the good. Nobody whom I know—I remind the House that I was a security Minister—ever argues that because a proposal is not perfect, it should not be implemented, although it would provide an additional benefit.
	I listened carefully to the Home Secretary, who made it clear that he is introducing the legislation not as a panacea or cure, but as an additional benefit in a changed and more threatening world. Having said that, I join my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) and other hon. Members in saying that the Bill must be amended.
	The Bill must be strengthened as a protection against function creep. I have had the privilege of being in government, so I am not making a partisan point when I say that function creep is an inherent temptation to all Governments. In that regard, strengthening the Bill is important. Each one of us should have guaranteed access to whatever information the system holds about us. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 may not be sufficient in that regard, and that matter must be debated.
	I also agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal that the commissioner should be responsible to Parliament, not to Government. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary made that point, and I reiterate it because I believe in it so strongly. I also agree with those who have said that given the sensitive nature of the Bill, which goes to the heart of who we are and how we see ourselves as a nation, any changes should be by primary legislation, not secondary legislation.
	When we debate a matter of principle in this House, it tends to polarise views and the language tends to shift to the ends of the political spectrum. We would do the nation a service if we resisted that temptation tonight and recognised that a serious benefit may derive from the Bill. Although the Bill is not a panacea for the future, it is an opportunity to do good in a changed and more threatening world.

Martin Linton: This week, a number of journalists—and indeed my Whip—asked me whether I support the Government proposals on ID cards. I told them that they do not need to ask me whether I support ID cards, because I was the MP who suggested that the Government should introduce them in the first place, when I was a member of the Home Affairs Committee.
	My idea was called "entitlement cards", and it was suggested by the Home Affairs Committee report on border controls, which was published in January 2000. I suggested that one would not need to carry the entitlement card and that one would not be asked for it on the street, but that one would need it to establish one's entitlement to a public service, such as registering with a GP or school or applying for a benefit or student loan.
	Nearly five years down the line, what is essentially the same idea has gone through all the possible parliamentary stages that one can imagine—White Paper, public consultation, draft Bill, Select Committee report and Government response—and it has finally reached the Floor of the House of Commons as a Bill, which I warmly welcome and support.
	Practically the only change to the original proposal that we discussed 5 years ago is that the Home Office, having launched the card as an "entitlement card", has decided to revert to "identity card", because it found from focus groups that people preferred it. I am not sure whether it is right, because I called it an "entitlement card" to emphasise that it is not a must-carry-at-all-times identity card and that it does not confer any powers on the police, unlike the South African pass laws or before them the Nazi pass laws.
	Calling the card an "entitlement card" emphasises two things that resonate with the British voter. First, that the card concerns what we, as individuals, are entitled to. Secondly, that it concerns fairness, everyone getting their due and not jumping queues. Those reassurances are still needed.

David Trimble: Time is limited, and there are only a limited number of points that can be made. Because of the time limit on speeches, many hon. Members will be unable to speak, and those who do will not be able to say very much, yet this is a huge subject and this debate has been truncated by the earlier statements and other matters. That in itself is not satisfactory.
	Another unsatisfactory matter with regard to time is the programme motion, which aims to get the Bill out of Committee by 27 January. That is simply ludicrous when one considers all the issues involved. When the Home Secretary spoke, there was such a rush of interventions on a broad range of issues that my impression was that he often had to abandon his text or truncate it hugely. Even so, he took up a very large slice of the time that is available.
	As other hon. Members have pointed out, many of the provisions in the Bill will be spelled out in delegated legislation, which means that they will not be subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny. This is a very important issue, but it is clear that it will not be given proper scrutiny in this House. I should say in passing that that is partly due to this terrible thing called modernisation, which has done more damage to this House and to parliamentary democracy than anything else that has happened in my time. The Government need to reflect on that. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) made good points on that and the Government should reflect on them.
	The Home Secretary clearly did not understand what I meant when I referred to a common travel area in an intervention. The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration subsequently responded to the point but I do not believe that he covered it. I meant the common travel area that exists in the British isles between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. If identity cards were introduced for UK citizens yet the position continued whereby all citizens of the Republic of Ireland or people who might legally be able to reside there can travel to and through the United Kingdom with no travel documents—they do not need a passport or any other travel document—there would be a huge problem and loophole.
	It is not sufficient for the Minister to claim that the European Union will introduce common travel documents when travel documents are not required. If the proposal reaches its final stage of being a compulsory identity card system, it will be necessary to have persuaded the Irish Republic to introduce an almost identical system. A common or shared database will probably be needed for it to operate. I do not know if any of those matters have been considered and that was the reason for my intervention. I hope that they will be considered.
	There was some discussion about the form that the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) has; I have even more form on the subject. I must tell the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) that my form dates back to 1992. From then onwards, I tabled amendments and proposals in Committee and on the Floor of the House for the introduction of identity cards. I did that for the simple reason that the then Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Ronnie Flanagan, put it at the top of the list of measures that he wanted for strengthening his operations to deal with terrorism. He wanted that despite the fact, which the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) pointed out, that we had had photo ID driving licences in Northern Ireland since the early 1980s that were used as the basis of a database, by reference to which the security forces—the police and the Army—stopped people. Although that had been the position since the early 1980s, the Chief Constable considered it inadequate. He needed more and I therefore supported the concept, to which I am consequently tied.
	I believe that the concept is right and that the point about civil liberties is overdone. The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir Brian Mawhinney) made the point that so many things currently happen that enable records to be kept. I wish we had time to show that, but if we only consider the way in which possession of a mobile phone exposes one to huge surveillance and provides a tremendous amount of information, that makes the point. Supermarket loyalty cards have also been mentioned. Again, they enable a tremendous amount of information to be gathered.
	The problem is not the information but the way in which it might be handled. The points about the need for the commissioner to be independent were well made. I hope that the Government will consider those matters because the provisions in the Bill are not sufficient. There is a host of practical issues to consider, for example, what information to include, how it is accessed and so on. However, I remain attached in principle to identity cards and especially to a national identity register. That is important for many reasons.
	In Northern Ireland, we found that there was good reason to believe that many people on the electoral register did not exist and that there were bogus registrations. I suspect that that applies in England. The measures, based on national insurance numbers, that were introduced in Northern Ireland have had a significant effect. If we had a national identity register, there would be no need for them and there would be greater confidence in, for example, the electoral register. I fear that hon. Members are sometimes unwilling to face up to the extent of the problem. I believe that a similar problem of electoral abuse, which existed in Northern Ireland, applies in cities here. That is an additional reason for ID cards.
	I want to pick up the point about devolution. We were teased earlier about what the Labour Administration in Cardiff would do and given some hints about the actions of the Labour Administration in Edinburgh. They are both old Labour Administrations and the Government may need to act to get them into line. However, if recent negotiations proved successful and a Democratic Unionist party-Sinn Fein coalition took over the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland, what might happen? Although old Labour may be slightly foreign or detached from the Government Front Bench, a DUP/Sinn Fein coalition would be from a totally different planet. The idea that it would have some of the powers for which the Bill provides beggars belief. I suspect that the Government will have to find methods of extending measures to the devolved Administrations, just as I believe that the scheme will eventually be introduced.
	I understand why the scheme will be voluntary at the beginning. Much work is required to build up a system and ensure that it works effectively. It will take years, and it will also be years before we are in a position to move to an automatic identity system, which is effective throughout the United Kingdom and marries up with actions elsewhere in Europe. However, we need proper scrutiny now, and we need the Government to be more flexible in the succeeding weeks than they currently appear to be.

Gwyn Prosser: Let me make some progress.
	Although most immigrants are law abiding and peaceful, a small number of asylum seekers in that part of east Kent sought fraudulent ways in which to make multiple claims for benefit. Some succeeded in picking up large amounts of money by making more than one application for asylum and using the false identity to double their money. That was not difficult to do at the time, because the authority to claim such benefits was simply a letter from the Home Office that could easily be forged with a little Tippex and a photocopier. But that is just the lower end of the forgery scale. At the higher end is criminals' ability to make very passable copies of British and foreign passports and ID cards.
	Hon. Members may remember a BBC documentary film maker posing as an asylum seeker in Dover. He was put in contact with a gang in London who, at a cost, manufactured a complete set of false identity documents within a few days. To tackle that abuse, the Government introduced identity cards for all asylum seekers—that has already been mentioned—as part of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Those asylum registration cards—ARCs as they are called—are also biometric. They hold the electronic imprint of the holder's fingerprints in digital form.
	The new system was implemented speedily and without problems. As well as being highly effective in combating fraud, those new cards are welcomed by asylum seekers because they help clearly to define their status and ensure that they get speedy access to their legitimate benefits. I have heard of no instance of an ARC being successfully forged, and my experience of seeing the real benefits of this card, as well as my view that the lack of identity cards in this country was a big pull factor for economic migrants and asylum seekers, persuaded me to support and promote the introduction of secure biometric ID cards for the rest of the population.
	The creation of multiple identities is by no means limited to asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. A large proportion of criminals use false and multiple identities to defraud and to escape detection. Stolen identities are the stock-in-trade of some villains. When police tracked down the evil people smugglers who allowed 58 young Chinese to perish in the back of a container in my constituency of Dover, one of the criminals had no fewer than 51 separate identities, all supported by false documentation.
	Owing to the flow of immigrants to Dover, the volume of illegal working in Kent increased and the activities of the illicit gangmasters flourished. That is another area of criminality where the ability to define identity by the production of a secure biometric card would help to crack down on illegal working and on the people who smuggle others into Britain and profit from their human misery.
	I believe that those reasons alone are probably sufficient for the introduction of identity cards, but the massive escalation in the threat to our citizens and to our communities represented by the attack on the twin towers in 2001 has added a new dimension to the debate, as well as another important reason for ensuring that our police, our border control officers and our security services know with a degree of certainty who is in the country and who is who.
	I do not think that anyone believes that the threat that organisations such as al-Qaeda pose to our communities will diminish in the foreseeable future, and there is every probability that, with the passage of time, international terrorists will become more threatening and more sophisticated in their planning. This means that it is even more important than ever that the state knows who is in the country and has reliable population statistics, which is why I would welcome the reintroduction of embarkation controls in Britain to run alongside secure compulsory ID cards.

Gwyn Prosser: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generous remarks, but the issue of the three-month delay was dealt with adequately from the Front Bench during the opening speeches.
	The critics of ID cards keep wheeling out the old chestnut that ID cards did not or would not stop any of the notorious terrorist attacks—we have heard that any number of times tonight—but that argument ignores the enormous amount of preparation involved in and the enormous number of people who prepare the ground for such attacks. It is well known that a significant proportion of those people lie dormant by hiding behind false identities. We have already heard that about 30 per cent. of terrorists use false identities to get by.
	Our security and police chiefs—the people with the awesome responsibility of protecting us from the destructive outrages of terrorists—all say that ID cards would help them in their task. The same people tell us that, although they have already successfully disrupted and prevented more than one major terrorist attack in Britain in recent months, a further attack on the capital is inevitable rather than just likely.
	So to those who argue that identity cards did not prevent 9/11 and Madrid, the security chiefs of those countries are entitled to say that although, sadly and tragically, their anti-terrorist units did not prevent the attacks, that is not to say that those units have no use or that they should never have been established in the first place.
	I know from taking soundings in my area that the vast majority of my constituents want ID cards to be introduced. We know from our consultations that about 80 per cent. of the British people want ID cards introduced. We know that all the security people want ID cards. We know that nearly all our European partners already have some form of ID card in place. There is a rising tide of support for these timely new measures; I am happy to add my support for this important Bill tonight.

Patsy Calton: The Government argue that identity cards and the national register will protect us from terrorists, stop benefit fraud and prevent illegal immigration—their effect will be to provide an answer to all our problems. The Conservatives appear to agree. "Appear" is the operative word: why else would so many of them, we understand, have been told to take the day off rather than reveal the extent to which they oppose identity cards?
	I am very dubious about the first claim of ID cards protecting us from terrorism. We all want our constituents to be protected from terrorist attacks, which are made more likely by this country's involvement in the war in Iraq. The Government dragged the country into that war—again, with the full backing of the official Opposition. Then, as now, it was left to the Liberal Democrats to lead the opposition in the House. However, I see no evidence that identity cards have prevented terrorist attacks in Europe. Over recent years, hardly a European state has not had its citizens murdered by terrorists, as in Madrid in the train bombings, despite Spain's citizens having been compelled for many years to have identity cards.
	The amount of taxpayers' money needed to start up this system is huge—an estimated £3 billion or more for the computer system. We should watch for the announcement that that has doubled or trebled, as the cost of so many such schemes does. Then there will be the as yet unknown ongoing costs for the army of people to maintain the system and constantly to update individuals' records as their addresses and situations change. How many more people will have to be put on the payroll to do that, and at what cost? We simply do not know.
	I have seen various initial estimates of the cost to each of us of an identity card. No one seems to know the true figure, but whatever it is, how long will it be before it rockets? How will that affect those who were not forced to register for an ID card when renewing their passport, but who are given notice that the Secretary of State requires them to register under threat of a £2,500 fine for non-registration?

Jeremy Corbyn: I am pleased that we are at last debating this issue, because it seems that we are being asked to accept some kind of illusion of security. We are told that there are problems in society of high levels of crime, illegal immigration, illegal working, benefit fraud and terrorism, all of which may or may not be true. Nobody from the Home Office or anywhere else, however, has managed to explain how any of those problems will be solved by the introduction of compulsory identity cards, voluntary identity cards, or voluntary identity cards that later become compulsory. Let us start to examine the arguments and how the scheme would operate, and let us think it through.
	If one wants to come into this country to create terrorist mayhem or commit major fraud, one does not come in through an airport or sea port with "Terrorist" written across one's forehead, or "Criminal" written across one's breast, and say, "I'm here to cause mayhem". What is the first thing that one does? One gets some form of credible identity—a stack of bank cards and all those bits of information that will get access to society—one dresses the part, and one gets away it. With all the technology available, and the enormous expense of computer programmes for this system, who is to say that the fraudsters will not already be ahead of the game? As my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has pointed out, the fraudulent use of bank cards is already rife. Those who wish to commit fraud on bank cards are well ahead of the game and are well capable of doing it. Who is to say that there is not a possibility in the future either of fiddling forms of iris recognition or hacking into the computer and issuing multiple cards to people so that they can use such cards fraudulently?

Janet Dean: I was just about to come to that point. Some of my constituents are indeed concerned about the cost of the card to individuals, especially regarding the price that will be charged to the least well off in society, such as pensioners, who might not have any wish or need to purchase a passport. In that respect, I am pleased that the Government have already made a commitment to issuing cards at a reduced fee for vulnerable groups such as those on low incomes and to looking further into arrangements for the elderly, including consideration of some non-biometric cards for those who are frail and cannot be expected to have biometric measurements taken.
	Although there is widespread acceptance of the principle of ID cards, the introduction of a system will bring benefits only if we can be sure that the national identity register is secure, with up-to-date information and accurate biometric identity markers. The report of the Home Affairs Committee states:
	"We believe there is a danger that in many day-to-day situations the presentation alone of an identity card will be assumed to prove the identity of the holder without the card itself or the biometrics being checked, thus making possession of a stolen or forged identity card an easier way to carry out identity fraud than is currently the case. The availability of readers of cards and biometrics, including to the private sector, is therefore a crucial factor."
	I know from the Government response to that Select Committee report that some Departments have begun to assess their need for identity card readers. It would seem that there is still much work to be done to establish the true requirements of both the public and the private sector.
	We should recognise that the Government's proposals for identity cards go much further than those in other countries, but also that we do not have a history of requiring as strict a registration system as many other countries do. Sweden has had a personal number system from birth for many years, but we found when we met people there that the country is yet to decide whether to have biometric measurements. The Swedish cards will be mainly for travel within Europe. In Germany, people are used to having to notify the authorities immediately of any change of address, yet the country has not gone as far with identity cards as we are proposing.
	I believe that a system that does not involve biometrics would not be worth introducing. The use of biometrics should enable us to have a secure system, but to ensure that, it is vital to use accurate technology, to protect the system when data is inputted and to check the information rigorously. Providing the system is secure, it should not be possible for people to register more than once.
	One of the concerns of the Home Affairs Committee was that we should avoid so-called function creep. For example, the development of the national identity register could establish a national fingerprint register, posing the question whether it should be used for solving crime as well as proving identity. We thought it highly likely that there would be public pressure for the information to be used to detect offenders, especially in the case of serious crime. The Home Affairs Committee report also stated that the benefits must not be entirely, or even predominantly, to the state. I am glad that the Government recognised that in their response.
	Combating identity fraud will protect the individual as well as tackling crime. It will be useful for young people to be able to identify themselves when making age-related purchases. It will also be helpful if individuals no longer have to notify many different Departments of a change of address.
	As long as the Government proceed with care, there is everything to be gained from having ID cards for the security of the country and the safety and protection of individual members of our society.

David Curry: I am not a member of the libertarian right. Rather, I am what I suppose the Home Secretary would describe as a liberal, although to set one's face against authoritarian measures undertaken in the name of the public interest perhaps requires a tough liberalism, and I would describe myself as a tough rather than a soggy liberal.
	Tonight, however, I make common cause with those who might more comfortably think of themselves as members of the libertarian right, because I believe that the Bill is a step too far, and I shall be in the Lobby against it. In any democracy, there is an implicit contract between the citizen and the state about the way in which freedom is to be exercised. Some freedom is exercised individually. I choose to exercise it individually because I believe that that is what is best both for myself and for the wider society. Some freedom I choose to be vested in a collective will because I believe that that is better for the broader community and, ultimately, in my interest as well.
	There is not a frozen formula: political treatises have been written in every century about where the balance lies between the authority of the state and the authority of the individual. It is undoubtedly true that 9/11 seems to have changed the balance, both in psychological and in political terms, but that does not mean that the question does not have to be asked. We ought constantly to question whether those measures that have been taken by the state, no doubt in good will and out of a spirit of paternalism rather than one of authoritarianism, are necessary.
	I have come to the conclusion that we are seeing an encroachment of paternalism, invading the space occupied by liberalism and the role of the individual. Under this Government, in particular, the power of the intrusion of the state has increased and is increasing, and it ought to be halted. Under Labour, ironically, we have seen a sort of creeping Bonapartism in government. I am a well-known Francophile—it is one of the problems I have. I would not start from the assumption that French practices are wrong, but I find it ironic that, over the past decade or so, Bonapartism has, at last, been on the retreat in France, just when it has been on the increase in the United Kingdom. I do not wish to be counted one of les administrés, identifying myself as a subject of the state and being given my identity in terms of what the state endows me with.
	I do not believe in the analogies that people have drawn with bank cards, supermarket cards and even national insurance numbers. Those are specific, limited and often voluntary things. The accumulation of information and power in one instrument is materially and substantively different from the dispersal of powers through separate instruments.
	The Home Secretary says that we will not have to carry the card and the police will not be able to ask to see it. That makes me wonder why it will exist at all. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) explained, we have seen a curious accumulation of the purposes of the Bill, and if one of the card's purposes is to combat terrorism, it is difficult to explain why it should be treated rather like my driving licence. With that, if I commit an offence, I can produce the licence at a police station of my choice within, I think, seven days. By that time, if I had terrorist intent, I doubt whether I would choose to present my card to my local police station in Skipton or Ripon at the appointed hour.
	The trouble is that the Government are proceeding, in this as in so many things, by assertion, not by explanation or persuasion. I am always concerned about how things work in practice and I believe that this Bill will end up in a compulsory scheme. People will have to have an obligation to carry the cards or I cannot see the point of it.
	I remember that, when I was the correspondent for the Financial Times in Paris, I used to see the police waiting outside the metro stations. They did not stop the whites, but those with a Maghreb complexion—those from north Africa. If one were white, one could have paraded through Paris wearing a bathing costume in the middle of winter and nobody would have taken any interest. The Bill, therefore, poses more than one problem with regard to the ethnic minority communities in Britain. It is a problem if the police decide to focus on members of the ethnic minority community, but it is equally a problem if the police take a softly, softly approach. In that case, other members of the community complain, as those of us who canvassed in recent by-elections have noted. People object when they think that the police are less rigorous in their approach to certain matters of ordinary law enforcement in ethnic minority areas than in other areas, because they do not wish to disturb community relationships or community equilibrium. In either case, it is a problem.
	My fundamental problem is that the Bill is an empty vessel into which the Home Secretary can pour powers. The procedures for secondary legislation in this Parliament, which have been used by all Governments, amount—for all intents and purposes—to government by decree. If we are to have a commissioner, he should be analogous to the National Audit Office and answerable to this House to give us some measure of reassurance.
	Another problem is the technical aspect and whether the proposals will work. Cost is another issue, and I was astonished that the Home Secretary in a long speech—admittedly, he took many interventions—did not mention the word. If there are reasons to vote against the Bill, that is one of them. He uttered not a single phrase related to the cost of the project. The Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee is seeking to catch your eye later, Madam Deputy Speaker, and he will know that the Government's record on the escalation of costs of public contracts, especially in IT, is catastrophic. That money could be spent elsewhere to buy a great deal of security and common or garden policing. It could even be spent to keep some of the police stations in my constituency open for 24 hours, rather than office hours as they are at present, which causes considerable resentment among ordinary people.
	The timetable is monstrous. Is this a serious attempt to produce legislation or is it to provide an item for an election manifesto? To propose determining something as complex as this Bill in a matter of three weeks is an insult to the House. The implications are enormous and we know from past experience that scrutiny is poor in such circumstances. That is why the House of Lords is so necessary, although no doubt that will change, if this Government are returned.
	Finally, I say to my Front-Bench colleagues that we do not need to compete with Labour. We stand for individual liberty and a free and open society, in which there is price for responsibility. We should have small Government and big people. This Bill makes the Government too big and me too small.

Neil Gerrard: I oppose the Bill. I am sorry that the amendment that I tabled was not selected, but as it was not, I shall support the amendment moved by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), which is similar in intent.
	I have three reasons for opposing the Bill. First, I do not believe that it will do what is claimed. It certainly will not deliver benefits proportional to the cost. Whatever benefits it may deliver, they should be proportional to the cost of implementing it. Secondly, I have concerns about the technology and, thirdly, about the impact on personal privacy. It is incumbent on those who support the Bill to justify its cost, especially in comparison with the benefits of spending the money on other ways of dealing with some of the problems.
	I do not want to labour points that have already been made about some of the claims that have been made, such as those on terrorism or crime. However, I have never found that the police say that one of their major problems in dealing with crime is identifying people. The problem is producing evidence to connect the person whom they have identified with the crime. Furthermore, illegal working takes two: the employer and the employee. Employers who knowingly employ people who are in the country illegally and do not bother to make the checks that they are supposed to make about whether the person is entitled to work in the UK will be no more likely to carry out a check if the form it takes is an ID card.
	As the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) said, although the main arguments about ID cards change from time to time, in the end they all depend on compulsion to have a card. Without compulsion, none of the benefits could be obtained.
	A massive database is proposed and a massive infrastructure will be necessary, because there is no point in having cards that include biometrics without the infrastructure, including readers in a huge variety of places, to read and check them. A large number of people will have access to the database.
	To some degree, we are being mesmerised by technology; we think that technology is perfect. It will not be perfect. There will be false positives and false negatives from the readers and their rate will depend very much on how the readers are set up and the algorithms used to compare images from them. People will attempt to break into the database and they will probably be successful. The prize will be huge: the information in the database will make breaking into it extremely tempting.
	We have not paid much attention to a further point about the database, although the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) raised it earlier. The database will not appear from thin air, but will need to be created. How will it be set up? If the data that is input are not wholly accurate and not verified perfectly, the database will be fundamentally flawed from day one. I have heard nothing from the Government about how that verification will actually happen. It seems inevitable that it must be based on people's existing documents and evidence about themselves, so if a person already has a false identity, or ensures that they acquire one before they register, it will be transferred to the database. A person may also have other identities in countries that are not linked to the database.
	It is inevitable that there will be human error when inputting data. Records will get mixed up and one person's biometrics will be attached to someone else's record. That has already happened in databases that contain biometrics, with devastating consequences for some of the people whose data have been mixed up. Like other Members, I have dealt with constituents affected by false information from criminal record checks, including, recently, someone who lost his job for that reason.

Neil Gerrard: That is absolutely true. Millions of entries will go on to the database each year as it is created, so the potential for error will be enormous.
	Let me turn to privacy and the relationship between the individual and the state that the database will give rise to. Once a database of this nature has been created—the Bill contains powers for the Secretary of State to add more information to the database by order—it is absolutely inevitable that there will be function creep. There is no question about that. The Home Secretary more or less admitted earlier in the debate today that compulsion will be necessary. Without compulsion, the people who will not be on the database will be exactly the sort of the people whom the Home Office and Ministers say that they want to keep track of using the database. Being on the database and having an ID card must be compulsory, otherwise the whole structure will fail apart. Of course, the people who will be last to register will be those who want to keep their names off it, plus people who are elderly or infirm and so on.
	Who will have access to the database? We know from the debate and the regulatory impact assessment that banks and retailers, not just Departments, may have access to it. The Home Secretary even suggested that someone might check the database when people rent a video. Every time that someone's details are checked on the database—perhaps for a financial transaction, travel or whatever—all that information will be recorded. There will be an audit trail of every piece of information, every time that the database is accessed to check someone's particulars. I do not believe that the state should be collecting that sort of information about individuals.
	If I choose to have a Sainsbury's loyalty card and the company collects information about me and sends a Christmas card to my cat, or something like that, I am not really worried about it. It is my choice to have that card, and I know what the consequences are. I do not believe that the state should collect such information.
	If people start to realise what is implied and to think about the possible uses of those audit trails and the information that is held on the database, I believe that public opinion will change very rapidly. At the moment, a lot of people say, "Oh well, if I've done nothing wrong, I've got nothing to worry about." That is the wrong answer to the wrong question. People need to ask themselves what benefits will accrue from this vast expenditure. The one saving grace is that this will turn into a hugely expensive fiasco.

Michael Mates: Those on the Conservative Front Bench might be relieved to know that I am in favour of the principle of an identity card system. I shall vote with the Government tonight, but I understand and respect the principles of those of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members on both sides of the House who take the opposite view. I must add that, although I am in favour of the principle, the way that the Government are acting and some of the measures that they propose to take are absolutely unacceptable.
	Comments on those measures have been repeated around the House. I will not bore the House by saying it all again, except to say that they were most forcefully and persuasively articulated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). The way in which the issues of the commissioner, the Joint Committee and, above all, the timetable have been handled is an absolute insult to the House of Commons on a Bill that is, whatever one's view, as important as this, given the consequences that it will have for our people.
	I have been consistent in my support for identity cards almost as long as the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble). In fact, the House may be surprised to know that, on 28 November 1974, I made my maiden speech on this subject, just after the Guildford and Birmingham bombings. We were taking the Prevention of Terrorism Act through the House for the first time. I said then that I thought that such a system would help in the fight against terrorism and crime, and I still believe that. The Home Secretary of the day, Roy Jenkins, said that the suggestion was interesting, but that although identity cards might be helpful, they would be eminently forgeable. That was probably the case then, but technology has moved on over the past 30 years and we now have the chance to introduce a secure system with cards that would be more difficult to forge or replicate.
	I discussed the subject yesterday evening with a friend who is over here from the United States. He showed me his New Jersey driving licence, which is an amazingly high-tech piece of plastic. It tells the police who he is and includes his photograph and a hologram. To respond to what several hon. Members have said, an identity card system is not necessary in the United States because such cards exist.
	The Government are right not to make the scheme compulsory. People say that we are on a slippery slope, but I do not think that the scheme will ever be made compulsory because that would make martyrs. People would refuse cards on principle and there would be chaos. We need to prove that identity cards are so useful that everyone will want to carry them, which is the state of affairs in the United States. No one in the United States leaves their house without a form of identification. That is normally their driving licence, but it can be their health card. They always have adequate means to persuade people of whom they are.

Marsha Singh: I do not have much time, but I start by saying that Labour Members do not need Welsh nationalists to defend English liberties—we can defend them for ourselves.
	There are two issues here—principle and practicalities. In principle, I support identity cards, but in the context that they must eventually be compulsory. If they are not compulsory, they will not work. I have not been impressed by the arguments of those who are opposed to identity cards, because they would oppose them even if the system was cheap and was going to work perfectly. In many cases, they have confused principle and practicalities.
	Some Members have mentioned ethnic minorities. It does not help community relations, when there is great support for identity cards in the country, to say, "We didn't support the identity card legislation because it might have upset the sensitivities of ethnic minorities." Many people in ethnic minority communities are as happy with identity cards as the general population. In many situations, whether it is right or wrong that the situation occurred, an identity card might help to solve a misunderstanding and to stop the problem before it goes any further.
	On civil liberties—although I did not hear many   arguments about the subject—given that many democratic countries, especially in Europe, have identity cards, are we claiming that their standards of civil liberties are worse than ours? [Hon. Members: "Yes, they are."] They are not. I have never heard any hon. Member complain about the standard of civil liberties in our European partner countries, which have ID cards.
	I could go through a long list of subjects that the Select Committee considered in the context of Government aims on ID cards, but if one issue clinches it for me, it is identity fraud. On 21 November 2004, the Evening Standard ran a story that was headlined. "Identity Fraudsters Swamp Capital". The story stated:
	"An explosion in identity fraud has hit one in five Londoners, a survey found . . . Experts said the more serious cases, where entire identities are cloned, had jumped six-fold in four years".
	On 25 November, the Evening Standard included a story headlined, "Conman Stole Dead Child's Identity".

Marsha Singh: I have not got time.
	It transpired that the fraudster had used the birth certificate of a four-year-old child, who died in the 1960s, to obtain a national insurance number and driving licence to gain thousands of pounds in loans and credit cards.
	On 9 December, another story appeared in the Evening Standard, headed, "London is Biggest Target for ID Thieves". It stated:
	"Londoners are being ruthlessly targeted by gangs behind Britain's identity fraud crime wave . . . Around a quarter of the 120,000 people who fall victim to ID crime each year live in and around the capital".
	Only today, I received information from CIFAS, the organisation that calls itself the UK's fraud prevention service. It states that there were
	"900,000 fraud records from our 240 Member companies encompassing banking, credit cards, asset finance, retail credit,   mail order, insurance, investment management, telecommunications, factoring, and share dealing."
	Fraud occurred because identities were stolen from dead people. The figures are serious. We must either take the issue seriously by embracing ID cards or simply ignore the crime wave.
	I must ask the Minister a few questions about practicalities. If we need ID cards, surely they should be   compulsory. How satisfied is my hon. Friend that they will be fraud proof? Can he satisfy the House about   that? How satisfied is he that the database will be tamper proof? Given recent embarrassments with new technology, how satisfied is he that he will not be left with egg on his face? Can we afford the system? How can we be satisfied that costs will not spiral out of control? How can we be satisfied that the benefits of identity cards outweigh the cost?
	Although a majority of the British public supports ID cards, they do not want to pay for them. How will the Home Secretary bridge that gap? Can he give any assurances to people on low incomes or benefits that they will not have to pay? Will he exempt pensioners from any charges? Will he consider exempting them completely from the need to have ID cards?
	Like the majority of my colleagues on the Home Affairs Committee and with all the caveats that we expressed, I welcome the Bill.

Patrick Mercer: It is a pleasure to   follow the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh), who boldly made the point that ID cards, perhaps illiberally but realistically, will have to be introduced on a compulsory basis. He was preceded by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas), who, in an articulate speech, made the case clearly against ID cards.
	It is interesting that the debate has veered for and against, with so many factors being mentioned both for and against the proposal. That was expressed nowhere more clearly than in the speech of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson), who spoke for   the cards, advocated the use of CCTV and said that pensioners should be spared. Yet the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) made a similar speech and called the whole project an expensive fiasco.
	The debate started in tempestuous fashion with the Home Secretary being given a rough time on his first outing but taking a huge number of interventions and, frankly, dealing with them with one or two reservations. I have to say that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) made a very much better case for introducing ID cards. I found his case much more convincing and I wonder why the articulate nature of that speech has so far not been recognised by those on the Government Front Bench.
	Most clearly, my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), the shadow Home Secretary, laid out the five tests that Conservative Front Benchers have put forward. Whichever way we look at the issue, everybody—for or against—acknowledges the fact that these five tests must be considered for their value.
	We heard a curious speech against identity cards from the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), who performed a U-turn and gave us an extraordinary monologue on not chasing the 80 per cent. in favour but standing on principle. Well, every man to his own, but I   thought his most telling point came at the end of his articulate speech, when he said that the public's perception of the cards would evolve as the whole case developed. That point was clearly emphasised by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick), who was also speaking against.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) also made that point, speaking for identity cards. He added, however, that although he approves of the notion, the Government have lost the trust of the public, and therefore the issue will need the   closest of scrutiny as the Bill goes through the House.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir Brian Mawhinney) and the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) argued for the use of identity cards. My right hon. Friend made the point that the cards need to be heavily amended, particularly in respect of the need for the commissioner to be accountable directly to Parliament, while the right hon. Gentleman again made the point about the need for proper scrutiny. However, he and a number of other Members referred to the fact that driving licences were used in Northern Ireland as a form of identity card. I   shall return to that in a moment.
	Powerful speeches were made by my right hon. Friends the Members for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) and for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry). Both are against. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden spoke of a solution looking for   problems, while my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon referred to the whole issue being an empty vessel and secondary legislation being needed to deal with the thing properly.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) spoke clearly in favour of identity cards, saying that this was the subject of his maiden speech probably more years ago than we would care to mention. [Interruption.] Thirty years ago, I am told from the rear.
	The points that come across clearly to me are these. Identity cards have been used before, albeit not quite in such a way, in Northern Ireland. This was mentioned by the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews). Speaking from personal experience, I know that when the identity card in the shape of a driving licence with a photograph was introduced in Northern Ireland, we were told—I was on duty over there—that this would be a clear case of our being helped significantly in the fight against terrorism.
	I have to say that I take a different view, as the measure did not seem to make any difference at all. Those cards were used only by drivers. I acknowledge that that was a long time ago and that the biometric capabilities of the new cards might make a difference. The fact remains that this country is not ignorant about the use of ID cards against terrorism. Similarly, a number of right hon. and hon. Members—[Interruption.]

Patrick Mercer: Similarly, a number of right hon. and hon. Members have made the point that these cards would not have helped in Madrid. It is worth bearing in mind, though, the fact that the Spanish authorities had used such cards at some length against identified terrorist organisations such as ETA. The events of 11 March this year had been rehearsed by ETA at Christmas last year, and the use of such cards had made a considerable impact on ETA, and had in part caused that incident to be called off.
	Later, when Islamist fundamentalists picked up the same style of attack, it was clear that identity cards were not going to help against a new style of terrorism. The whole element of using cards against "clean skins", to use the vernacular, will be very much more difficult. In introducing these cards, will the Government make clear the sort of terrorism against which cards have been useful in the past? Such cards are less likely to be useful in future unless the biometrics prove capable of being used.
	This scheme will take years to implement. I am concerned that, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway pointed out, these cards will act as a pass rather than as identification—that once the card is shown to a   soldier, policeman or security worker, any individual will be able to get past that checkpoint and into that   building. The fact remains, above and beyond everything else, that to help the Home Secretary with this business, he needs a Minister for homeland security. This will be the most enormous burden on him, and I am sure that the introduction of such a post would be hugely helpful.
	While supporting the Bill, I want to iterate the words of many right hon. and hon. Members: if the Bill is to make any sense whatever, the five tests that we have identified will have to be examined. Above and beyond everything else, the Bill will have to be subject to the scrutiny of a Joint Committee of both Houses.

Des Browne: Like the curate's egg, this debate has been good in parts. I do not want to be too ungracious—I welcome the Conservative party's support, but on occasions tonight, I would have much preferred its Front Benchers not to have spoken in support of the measure. Otherwise, this has been a good debate.
	The debate has had its memorable moments. Apart from my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's "maiden" speech, in which he took a significant number of interventions, with eminent skill, across the broad waterfront of policies, we heard a balanced contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), in which, in a comparatively short period and showing the benefits of brevity, he set out the case for identity cards. The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir Brian Mawhinney), in another balanced contribution, did exactly the same.
	Among other memorable moments was the admission by the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) that we need to spend money to put biometrics into passports. We now have the Liberal Democrats' support for that. Will he therefore now explain why he and his colleagues have been making an arithmetical calculation that takes all that money out—[Interruption.] He says from a sedentary position that his calculation is on top of that. I can do the arithmetic as well as he can. The Liberal Democrats took the £450 million, which he now says must be spent on passports, added to that the £85 million, and the £50 million for verification, multiplied it by 10, and have gone around television and radio studios saying that the proposal will cost £5 billion, plus, in some cases, the £85 for each individual. Perhaps now we shall hear some honesty about the arithmetic of that policy from the Liberal Democrats, so that we can have a proper debate.

William Cash: Does the Minister accept that the history of such powers has been confined to times of emergency? In 1952 the courts disallowed identity cards on the grounds that there was no emergency at that time. That issue has not been examined in the debate, to my knowledge. Can the Minister tell me what specific emergency there is now?

Des Browne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is right to say that—as other hon. Members, and the excellent Library briefing papers for the debate, have pointed out—the only history of identity cards in this country dates from wartime emergencies. However, as the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire coherently pointed out, we live in different times now, and we face a different threat. We have to adjust the way in which we develop our public policies to respond to that environment.
	I am not arguing that this is an emergency. I am arguing that, for a number of reasons—most of which I   hope to cover in the short time available—the time has come for identity cards in the United Kingdom.

Des Browne: No, I shall not give way.
	The other highlight of the debate was the contribution by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), whom I heard give an almost identical speech in the Queen's Speech debate, not long ago. I am not saying that it was not a good speech. It was; indeed, it was worth listening to twice. However, the difference between the speech that he gave then and the one that he gave today is that—I hope that I recollect this correctly—he said that this policy had been hawked around by civil servants for years, and that when he was in government it was rejected. I am really sorry that his memory is so poor. He was a member of John Major's Government, who announced plans for an identity card scheme in August 1996. [Interruption.] Of course it was a voluntary scheme. They announced their scheme in that year's Queen's Speech and a draft identity card Bill was then announced, but they were unable to introduce it because the general election overtook them. The right hon. Gentleman says that their scheme was voluntary, as though that were a defence of his change of mind, which he has never admitted to in any previous debate. Of course, part of the criticism that he offered in the recent Queen's Speech debate was that a voluntary scheme would not work.
	In the time available, I shall be able to deal with only one or two of the major issues raised. First, let me deal with function creep, which is actually a convenient argument for those who oppose this Bill, because it allows them to debate the future rather than the present. They say, "This is what the process will lead to, so let us debate what the situation will be like in 10 years' time." Indeed, that is precisely what the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) did. He went forward in time by 10 years in order to have the debate that he wanted to have, rather than discuss the Bill.
	The Government have gone to significant lengths to ensure that, in so far as any legislation can prevent function creep, the Bill will not result in it. The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire invited me to reinforce that principle in Committee, and I will be happy to listen to any suggestions. But I will not   allow people to creep the Bill's functions by misrepresenting its provisions. With all due respect to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), that is exactly what he did when he said that criminal convictions could be added to the proposed register through secondary legislation. That cannot happen; only the information in schedule 1 can be recorded, which does not include criminal record information. He argued that such information can be added by amending the schedule through an order, but it cannot. Only registrable facts can be recorded, and as the definition in clause 1(5) shows, criminal records are not registrable.
	We have heard the same debate for months from the Opposition, who have set up a false prospectus. For a long time, the argument was that people will be required to carry ID cards. When we pointed out that the Government have made it clear throughout this debate that there would be no compulsion to carry ID cards, we were told that the system will not work unless there is compulsion. As a result, the basis of the debate was entirely misunderstood and misrepresented.
	This is a debate about identity cards, not about police functions or police powers. If there is to be a debate about terrorism, or about the powers of the police or any other agency to interdict terrorism, serious crime or   any other criminal activity—or, indeed, about any other aspect of public life—we ought to have it in a straightforward and honest fashion. It ought not to be included in a debate on identity cards. This debate is about our ability to give the citizens of this country the opportunity of the gold standard of identification that they are crying out for. They have in their wallets bits and pieces of identification that criminals throughout the country have the facility to copy and forge. Identity fraud alone is costing £1.3 billion; that is to say nothing of the cost to this and other countries of the use of false identities in terrorist activities.
	Independent measures of public opinion show that the longer the debate goes on, the greater the support for such a system. Indeed, a more recent public opinion poll than that used by some in this House—it was published in December—shows that 81 per cent. of the public support the use of ID cards. Indeed, 68 per cent. continue to support their use, even when it was explained that, in the context of a passport, the cost to them would be £85.
	This is a policy whose time has come, and I have absolutely no difficulty in commending it to the House.

Hydrogen Technology

Alistair Carmichael: I am pleased to have secured this Adjournment debate on what is, from my constituency perspective, a very important topic. In the course of the next half hour, we will bandy around a lot of talk about renewable and sustainable energy. From the point of view of my health tonight, this has taken on a more personal nature than I anticipated when I applied for the debate.
	Much has been said about the emergence of the hydrogen economy. That term describes the use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel or energy carrier, typically into three main applications: first, as a replacement for petrol or diesel for powering vehicles; secondly, in a stationary fuel cell to provide electricity for buildings or remote power applications; and thirdly, for portable power applications, where the fuel cell provides an alternative power source to batteries for laptop computers or mobile phones.
	One of the attractions of hydrogen as an energy carrier to the oil and automotive industries is that it can be produced from nuclear power and renewable sources through electrolysis or from hydrocarbons through reformation. The obvious synergy with the existing oil and gas industries makes the concept of a hydrogen economy compatible with all existing and emerging forms of energy production and applications, from nuclear and hydrocarbons to renewables.
	The Promoting Unst Renewable Energy—PURE—project in Shetland in my constituency uses renewable energy to produce hydrogen by electrolysis to provide a direct fossil fuel substitute. It has shown that it is technically possible to produce the island's energy needs locally, without any carbon emissions, and for the local community to own that means of production. That is why there is a growing sense of excitement in communities such as Shetland about the potential for others from the development of hydrogen technology. It has the potential to revolutionise and empower some of   our most economically fragile and peripheral communities.
	When the draft report on hydrogen technology in the United Kingdom was presented in January 2004, the point was made that energy security is regarded as an even greater political priority than the reduction of carbon emissions and the production of clean energy. The report highlighted several weaknesses in the Government's approach. Interviews with 14 senior civil servants involved in hydrogen policy revealed a need for a
	"clear, credible strategic framework for hydrogen energy in the United Kingdom, with Government facilitating the development of the strategy".
	However, it was also made clear that United Kingdom resource availability is a limiting factor and that
	"fragmentation and poor communication currently hinder Government action".
	Although it is acknowledged that hydrogen technology cuts across many Departments, it was also stated that there was no clear framework for leadership and communication. Officials admitted that there was no champion Department for hydrogen and that they did not know what other Departments were doing. They   also acknowledged that there are too many funding streams with not enough resources and that there is no single point of contact for external stakeholders.

Alex Salmond: I suspect that I am one of the few hon. Members who has driven a hydrogen fuel cell car, thanks to siGEN Ltd, which is based near Aberdeen airport.
	Does the hon. Gentleman agree that many companies that are involved in such technology argue that the Government require a clear strategy for deployment? Although a massive amount of research is taking place elsewhere in the world, especially in the United States, the particular opportunity that rural Scotland offers, with massive energy resources but an inability to get them to the point of use, could be addressed by a Government strategy on deployment.

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point with which I would not argue. The potential exists for the development of commercial applications of hydrogen technology. The simple truth is that if we do not do it, we will end up buying in work that has been done elsewhere in the world because, as I   shall explain, other people are pushing the agenda. If we do not get our act together soon, we will miss the opportunity.
	I caution the hon. Gentleman against boasting about being the only hon. Member to have driven a hydrogen fuel cell car. He would be astonished by the number of people who told me in the past half hour that they must be one of the few in the House to have driven hydrogen cars.
	Something in the region of €100 million of EU funding, matched by an equivalent amount of private investment, is being awarded to research and hydrogen and fuel cell demonstration projects after the first call for proposals by the sixth EU research framework programme. That will be reinforced via further calls for research and development proposals worth a public and private investment of €300 million, of which EU funding is €150 million.
	Those projects represent the initial phase and form a basis for the large-scale "Quick Start" initiative for hydrogen production and use, which is being launched jointly by Vice-President de Palacio and Commissioner Busquin. The European growth initiative earmarks an indicative €2.8 billion public and private funding for those partnerships over the next 10 years.
	The Government of Iceland, whose electricity is almost entirely derived from geothermal and hydro power, aim to become the world's first hydrogen economy, through a multi-million dollar partnership to convert Iceland's buses, cars and boats to the fuel over the next 30 years, exporting the rest to Europe. Following Iceland's lead, the Pacific island of Vanuatu has outlined its vision for a 100 per cent. hydrogen economy by 2010, based on renewable energy. Hawaii, rich in both solar and geothermal resources, recently established a public-private partnership to promote hydrogen in the island's energy economy, possibly exporting the excess to California. Surely, somewhere between Vanuatu and Hawaii on the one hand and Iceland on the other, there must be opportunities for Orkney and Shetland to find a place to fit in.
	Compared with countries such as the United States, Canada, Germany and Japan, the UK Government's commitment to developing a hydrogen economy has so far been lukewarm and public investment has been minimal. Quite simply, we are behind other countries in developing a hydrogen economy.
	Over the next 20 years, the world's largest economies—the USA, Japan and Europe—are committed to investing billions of pounds of public and private finance in hydrogen development. The Minister will be aware that BMW, for example, has already invested hundreds of millions of euros in the development of hydrogen cars and said recently that it would focus further support on parts of Europe where there has been a demonstrable commitment to providing the infrastructure to fuel its cars. All players in the public and private sectors agree that it is vital to establish demonstration projects and
	"supportive, appropriate environments for piloting the hydrogen economy."
	Also, a coherent Government strategy is vital to my constituency. The Minister is, I hope, aware of the vast   potential for renewable energy production in the   northern isles. We feel that there is a genuine opportunity for the peripheral parts of the UK to be at the forefront of a new way of developing and distributing energy.
	The PURE project, of which I have already spoken, has shown a great deal of dynamism. Its recently published feasibility report on a hydrogen test energy study centre in Shetland shows just how carefully local people are assessing how we can best maximise these opportunities. If the Department could show the same dynamism as a community the size of Unst, our hydrogen economy would be in a much healthier state.
	The Minister has no doubt heard me speak before on the problems caused by the lack of an interconnector to the national grid from Shetland. At best, that situation will not change for at least a further eight years, but that constraint provides the rationale during this time for focusing on developing renewables-to-hydrogen pilot, demonstration and research schemes, which can create a significant number of quality jobs.
	Hydrogen technology can also help to overcome the intermittency of some renewable energy sources. It is often argued that wind turbines cannot be relied on to provide a significant proportion of our energy because it is not always windy. Some in my constituency might dispute that assertion, but hydrogen technology none the less enables energy to be stored and released when renewable energy supplies are lower.
	The development of the PURE project has been the subject of considerable public consultation and public awareness raising in Unst and Shetland as a whole. Generally, the reaction has been favourable. The project demonstrates the production of hydrogen from wind power, the storage of wind power in the form of hydrogen, the conversion of stored hydrogen back to electricity available on demand and the use of hydrogen as an automotive fuel for a car converted to run on hydrogen by a Shetland graduate.

Lembit �pik: I applaud my hon. Friend for taking such an insightful look into the future of energy production, but does he agree that this could solve many of our problems in terms of aviation pollution? Although the technology may not yet be fully developed, it seems likely that we will be able to power aircraft with hydrogen technology, which would bring benefits to the Orkneys, as well as to other places, which could be leading on this.

Alistair Carmichael: My hon. Friend will be aware of the impact of the increased use of aviation fuel in recent years on our ability to meet carbon dioxide targets. His point about using hydrogen for aviation is perhaps real blue-skies work, in every sense of the term, but every journey starts with the smallest step and we will never get there if we do not do the work on the other aspects that I have referred to.
	On the commercial front, Shetland Composites collaborated with BOC, BP and siGEN, to which the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) referred, to design and build an eco-marathon car fitted with a fuel cell installed by Ross Gazey. This project was largely privately financed.
	At the same time, two intermediate-sized commercial projects, involving the establishment of renewable energy-powered hydrogen production systems, sized at several megawatts, are currently being discussed by Shetland Islands council. Those are large, well-resourced projects. Over the past year, young Shetland graduates Ross Gazey and David Sutherland have been involved in most of the principal hydrogen fuel cell installations in the UK: Tees valley, HARI at Loughborough, AMEC in Aberdeen, and most recently, the Trafalgar square Christmas tree lights.
	I have dwelt at some length on the various local projects in Shetland. I have done so because I wish to highlight to the Minister the enthusiasm in the communities. His predecessor was good at visiting Shetland, and I hope that he will find time to visit the constituency, too. Energy, be it hydrocarbons or renewables through wind and wave generation, is of supreme importance to us, and the role of Energy Minister is keenly followed in the northern isles.
	For us and other rural areas to take full advantage of the investment opportunities arising out of local hydrogen projects, there is a need for a clear political commitment in the United Kingdom and a corresponding commitment to public investment in it. The reason that we seek the UK Government's commitment now to the future development of a hydrogen economy is that, in combination with their existing commitment to renewable energy, they can acquire ownership over the production and supply of all their future energy needs.
	The potential for community ownership is perhaps most potent, particularly in the isles. The Minister will have heard me speak previously on the subject of petrol prices in the isles, where we routinely pay 10p to 15p per litre more than the rest of the country for petrol and diesel. If we can produce hydrogen as an automotive fuel, and if we do that from our renewable resources, we will no longer be at the mercy of oil companies, distributors and others who take their cut, resulting in us paying so much extra.
	I hope that the Government have given serious consideration to the January report. There is still a need for the Department of Trade and Industry to raise its game in this area. The exceptional work being done by the Unst partnership has the potential to produce a secure supply of clean energy, but that will be realised only if the Government establish a clear and effective framework in which the industry can flourish.

Mike O'Brien: I congratulate the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) on securing this debate. During the coming new year, I hope to be able to visit the Shetland Islands and perhaps see some of the developments taking place there.
	Let us imagine a world in which energy can be produced without using fossil fuels, where cars can run cleanly and quietly, emitting only a stream of water vapour, and where every country has access to clean and sustainable energy suppliesand islands, too, on a local basis. That is the long-term goal of the so-called hydrogen economy. It is not difficult to see why.
	Existing sources of fossil fuels are finite, and some are in politically unstable countries and regions of the world. Moreover, fossil fuels are contributing to climate change because of the emissions of carbon dioxide that are a by-product of their use. Hydrogen can be burned to produce energy, without tailpipe CO 2 emissions and with very low or even no emissions of atmospheric pollutants such as particulates. Even better, it can be converted into electricity using a novel technologyfuel cells, with water vapour as the only by-product. Many now believe that for transport, fuel cells running on hydrogen will be the long-term replacement for the internal combustion engine.
	There are, however, some major difficulties. The first major issue is hydrogen production. Hydrogen, like electricity, requires a source of energy to make it. Fortunately, hydrogen can be produced via a number of routes, thereby contributing to security of energy supply. Unfortunately, all those routes currently result in hydrogen being more expensive than the fuels that it is intended to replacein some cases, much more expensive.
	Depending on the method, there may also be significant emissions of CO 2 . Hydrogen is also difficult to store, especially on board a vehicle. A breakthrough in storage, perhaps using solid-state methods, would certainly give a major boost to the deployment of fuel cell vehicles. Storage limitations also add to the costs of distribution. Transporting large quantities of hydrogen may one day be possible through dedicated pipelineswe shall have to see. It is done on a small scale at the moment, but doing it on a large scale will require a lot of research to ensure that there is the right amount of pressure and capacity, and such investments will not be made until there is a prospect of sufficient demand to justify them.
	Fuel cells are at present the best technology for converting hydrogen to electric power. They offer high efficiencies and zero emissions at the point of use, and many believe that they are the only technology with the potential to replace the internal combustion engine in buses, trucks, lorries and cars. Fuel cells using a range of fuels also have potential applications for stationary power, including combined heat and power, andin the long term, perhapsfor portable power in devices such as power tools. However, they are currently too expensive, particularly for transport applications, and durability too needs to be improved.
	For those reasons, commercialisation of exclusively fuel cell-driven vehicles is unlikely to occur on any significant scale before 2020. We can see prototypes, and even now, we can see how partially hydrogen-powered vehicles can be used in our cities, as the hon. Gentleman said. None the less, we need quite a lot of scientific development to achieve the sort of breakthrough we need for real commercialisation.
	The Government have had a programme to support fuel cell technology for many years. More specifically on hydrogen, the Department of Trade and Industry recently commissioned a study to develop a strategic framework for hydrogen energy
	activities in the UK. That was undertaken by E4tech, Element Energy and Eoin Lees Energy, and has just reported. A report of the analysis is being placed on the DTI's sustainable energy policy network website. We will consider the specific recommendations carefully, and hope to publish them, together with our response, by the end of February 2005. As the hon. Gentleman can see, we are taking this matter seriously, and we are moving forward with recommendations such as those suggested.
	The key energy priorities beyond 2020 are cost-competitive CO 2 reduction and improved upstream energy security. By 2030, hydrogen energy could provide cost-competitive CO 2 reductions in transport via six routes, all involving fuel cell vehicles. They also offer energy security, and the routes feature low-CO 2 energy from sources such as renewable or nuclear electricity, or fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage.
	No single chain will be sufficient to meet all the UK's needs, and some chains may subsequently be ruled out, for various reasons.

CORRECTION

16 December 2004: column numbers for the debate incorrectly commenced at 1175 instead of 1775. This has now been corrected.